Scientists will quickly discover out whether or not the Lucy mission works as supposed

A bit greater than two years have handed for the reason that Lucy mission launched on an Atlas V rocket, in the end certain for asteroids that share an orbit with Jupiter. After a gravity help from Earth in 2022, the spacecraft has been making a beeline for an intermediate goal, and now it’s practically there.

On Wednesday, the $1 billion mission is because of make its first asteroid flyby, coming to inside 265 miles (425 km) of the small foremost belt asteroid Dinkinesh. In a weblog put up, NASA says the encounter will happen at 12:54 pm ET (16:54 UTC).

About an hour earlier than the encounter, the spacecraft will start making an attempt to lock on to the small asteroid in order that its devices are oriented towards it. It will enable for the absolute best place to take knowledge from Dinkinesh as Lucy speeds by at 10,000 mph (4,470 meters per second).

Throughout this maneuver, Lucy’s foremost antenna can be pointed away from Earth, so it is not going to be in communication with its operators at Goddard Area Flight Middle in Greenbelt, Maryland. After the flyby, Lucy will reorient itself to reestablish communications with Earth via the Deep Area Community. Imagery and different knowledge can be relayed again to Earth for a number of subsequent days.

What’s in a reputation?

This is a crucial flyby for Lucy for a number of causes. To begin with, it is the primary actual check of the spacecraft’s monitoring system. If this fails, the asteroid can be little greater than a blur as Lucy zips by.

Symbolically, the asteroid flyby can be important. Lucy, the spacecraft, is known as after the Lucy hominin fossils present in 1974 in Ethiopia. These fossils of the Australopithecus afarensis species are vital to our understanding of human evolution and helped scientists decide that our potential to stroll on two legs preceded the rise in mind dimension that is likely one of the dominant traits of recent people.

The NASA mission will examine “Trojan” asteroids that share the identical orbit as Jupiter. Scientists consider these asteroids are remnants of the period of planet formation within the Photo voltaic System and are due to this fact akin to fossils. Therefore, the title Lucy for this mission.

Dinkinesh, which is sort of a kilometer throughout at its widest level, was found in 1999. It was unnamed when the Lucy mission focused it for its first flyby as a check of the monitoring system, en path to the Jovian trojan asteroids later this decade. So, Lucy mission scientists proposed the title Dinkinesh, the Ethiopian title for the Lucy fossils.

It was authorized earlier this yr by the Worldwide Astronomical Union.