Close Flyby of Lucy Spacecraft This Weekend Has NASA on Collision Alert

It’s been a yr since NASA launched its Lucy spacecraft on a mission to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. On Sunday, Lucy will wave howdy to Earth for the primary time throughout a quick, however probably harmful, rendezvous. In the unlikely occasion of a collision, the mission group has ready maneuvers to guard the spacecraft from satellites and area junk.

Lucy’s first flyby of Earth will place the spacecraft a mere 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the floor, in line with a NASA statement. That’s nearer than the 254 miles (408 kilometers) that separates the International Space Station from the bottom. NASA says this layer of low Earth orbit is filled with greater than 47,000 satellites, area particles, and different objects spinning quickly round our planet, and due to this fact not a really secure place for a lone spacecraft.

To shield Lucy, NASA engineers have been analyzing the spacecraft’s possibilities of a collision within the week earlier than the deliberate flyby. It would possibly seem to be they’re chopping it shut, however the nearer the collision evaluation is to the flyby, the higher the accuracy of the predictions. “The further you’re predicting into the future, the more uncertain you are about where an object is going to be,” Dolan Highsmith, chief engineer for the Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis group at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, stated within the assertion.

The group is attempting to foretell the place of the Lucy spacecraft through the flyby, in addition to the positions of the encompassing objects. Where these objects shall be sooner or later additionally will depend on the Sun’s exercise. Our star flings plasma and radiation into area, growing the density of the ambiance and tugging on spacecraft, which causes them to sluggish down.

The collision evaluation group will ship Lucy’s place to the Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron, which screens objects in low Earth orbit. The group is ready to carry out swerving maneuvers if Lucy has extra than a 1 in 10,000 probability of colliding with one other object. “With such a high value mission, you really need to make sure that you have the capability, in case it’s a bad day, to get out of the way,” Highsmith stated.

Lucy’s navigation engineers have ready two maneuvers in case the spacecraft wants to maneuver out of the best way, altering the time of closest strategy with one other object by both two or 4 seconds. “This is a small correction, but it is enough to avoid a potentially catastrophic collision,” Coralie Adam, Lucy deputy navigation group chief from KinetX Aerospace, stated in a statement. The two maneuvers require engine burns to hurry up the spacecraft because it swings previous Earth, touring at a pace of about 8 miles (12 km) per second.

The flyby shall be Lucy’s first gravitational help, utilizing Earth to position the spacecraft on a brand new trajectory past the orbit of Mars. Lucy received’t be seen to observers from Earth earlier than its deliberate flyby since it can look like approaching our planet from the route of the Sun. But on October 16 at round 6:55 a.m. ET, Lucy shall be seen for individuals in Western Australia earlier than ducking behind Earth’s shadow. The spacecraft will reappear once more at 7:26 a.m. ET, the place observers within the western United States might be able to catch a glimpse of Lucy utilizing binoculars, in line with NASA. During its flyby, Lucy will take photos of Earth and the Moon. These photographs will assist mission scientists calibrate Lucy’s devices.

The new trajectory will place Lucy on a two-year orbit across the Sun, on the finish of which Lucy will return to Earth for but one other gravity help. From there, Lucy will nonetheless have about 5 years to go earlier than reaching its first goal, asteroid Donaldjohanson. In August 2027, Lucy will start its Trojan tour by visiting Eurybates and its binary accomplice Queta, adopted by Polymele and its binary accomplice, Leucus, Orus, and the binary pair Patroclus and Menoetius.

The Trojan asteroids are two swarms of rocky our bodies that orbit the Sun, one main forward of Jupiter and one other trailing behind. These area rocks are held in a gravitational balancing act between Jupiter and the Sun and are believed to be the remnants of the primordial materials that shaped the outer planets. Lucy would be the first spacecraft to go to the Trojans, probably unlocking the thriller of how the photo voltaic system’s outer planets shaped billions of years in the past.

“The last time we saw the spacecraft, it was being enclosed in the payload fairing in Florida,” Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator on the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), stated in an announcement. “It is exciting that we will be able to stand here in Colorado and see the spacecraft again. And this time Lucy will be in the sky.”

More: Astronomers Chase Shadows From Jupiter’s Mysterious Trojan Asteroids