NASA’s Lucy mission will soon be in the sky, with a launch set for Saturday:
Less than five years have gone by since NASA selected the "Lucy" mission for development as part of its Discovery Mission program, and now the intriguing spacecraft is ready for launch.
The $981 million mission will fly an extremely complex trajectory over the span of a dozen years. The spacecraft will swing by Earth a total of three times for gravitational assists as it visits a main-belt asteroid, 52246 Donaldjohanson, and subsequently flies by eight Trojan asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit around the Sun.
The Lucy mission is scheduled to launch on Saturday at 5:34 am ET (09:34 UTC) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. An Atlas V rocket carrying the 1.5-ton spacecraft rolled to the launch pad on Thursday in advance of the launch attempt. The weather looks fine Saturday morning, with a 90 percent chance of favorable conditions. The launch will be covered live on NASA TV.
Lucy will fly by its first asteroid target in April 2025, a main-belt asteroid named after Donald Johanson, the American anthropologist who co-discovered the famed "Lucy" fossil in 1974. The fossil, of a female hominin species that lived about 3.2 million years ago, supported the evolutionary idea that bipedalism preceded an increase in brain size.
[...] No probe has flown by these smallish Trojan asteroids, which are clustered at stable LaGrange points trailing and ahead of Jupiter's orbit 5.2 astronomical units from the Sun. The asteroids are mostly dark but may be covered with tholins, which are organic compounds that could provide raw materials for the basic chemicals of life.
[...] According to Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, Lucy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the pandemic struck during a critical time period when the spacecraft was assembled with its four major scientific payloads. It took about 14 months to integrate the spacecraft bus with the instruments and verify that the craft could survive for a full 12-year mission in space. If Lucy is successful, the mission will travel farther on solar power than any previous spacecraft.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 16 2021, @01:15AM (2 children)
The irony of looking for life, while living through the Anthropocene, kinda puts a damper on the mission. 1 Billion Dollars...ya I know we can find out the origins of the Universe which is cool and all, but, what exactly can this do for us right now as we loose countless species here where we have the ONLY life in the Universe as we know it?
If you too where slow to catch the Lucy looking for life spin, here is NASA's link to the mission to get the details:
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/lucy/in-depth/ [nasa.gov]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(spacecraft) [wikipedia.org]
Oh and the wiki with this plaque where Ringo Starr shares a most thoughtful wish from Earth,
"Peace and Love"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 16 2021, @01:51AM
What Shatner was doing when up in "space"? Far better than his "Mr. Bojangles".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 16 2021, @05:00AM
Tholins aren't life.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 16 2021, @09:50AM (1 child)
The last message from Lucy says "I have been eaten by a grue."
(Score: 2) by weilawei on Saturday October 16 2021, @12:01PM
(Score: 2) by oumuamua on Saturday October 16 2021, @01:04PM (1 child)
If orbits line up right, maybe it can watch the cow comet https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=21/10/12/021229 [soylentnews.org]
They need to design all deepspace missions to carry an extra rocket with a microsat just for these kinds off the cuff multi-missions.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday October 16 2021, @02:00PM
I don't believe it will be lined up right, and it could take a lot of delta-V to send a separate probe out from it and intercept the comet (just look at the gravity assists it has to do to get to the Jupiter Trojans). Also unnecessary since the discovery was made just before Lucy launches and not years after it launched (in a hypothetical scenario where Lucy has this extra microsat).
We all know exactly what NASA needs to be able to visit C/2014 UN271. Rhymes with "Bar Tip". But C(ongress)/NASA will continue to bumble around for the forseeable future and miss C/2014 UN271.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday October 16 2021, @08:50PM (4 children)
I take it that the launch, which happened a several hours ago, was a boringly successful non-event event? Or we would've heard something by now?
I still think a top priority for space exploration is two more orbiters, one each for Uranus and Neptune. I admit I didn't expect much from Juno, but the views of Jupiter's polar regions alone were worth it.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday October 16 2021, @11:29PM (3 children)
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-ula-launch-lucy-mission-to-fossils-of-planet-formation/ [nasa.gov]
It's a successful launch.
Uranus and Neptune exploration have been repeatedly requested in Decadal Surveys, and ignored in favor of other planets. Jupiter is easier to reach and Juno [wikipedia.org] showed that it is viable to use solar power there. Plus, probes often use Jupiter for a gravity assist, see New Horizons [wikipedia.org].
It looks like there's some fresh advocacy [forbes.com] for a Neptune and Triton exploration mission.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday October 17 2021, @12:29AM (2 children)
I should think the difference in the ease of inserting a probe into orbit about either ice giant as compared to Jupiter aren't that big a deal, but maybe it is?
On the other hand, Planet 9, if it exists, would be a bit beyond current probes. Just a fly-by would require significant improvements in speed and/or longevity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 17 2021, @11:21PM (1 child)
It is hard to plan a flyby when you don't know where it is.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday October 18 2021, @03:58AM
It's not where it is, we have a fairly good approximate distance, and can make some plans based on that. It's if it is.