Reference: Found hereHeadlines:
The asteroid hunting spacecraft Lucy will make its second gravity assist of Earth today, swinging by our pale blue dot on its way to a group of asteroids known as the Trojans.
Lucy is a spacecraft on a 12-year journey into the distant solar system , where it will investigate a group of asteroids to better understand the origins of the outer planets and the birth of the solar system. But Lucy needs a little push to get there, and its upcoming flyby is set to occur tonight around 11:15 p.m. Eastern Time, according to to a NASA statement .
It is a common assumption that once a mission launches, it is gone, never to be seen around these parts again. That is often untrue—spacecraft don't carry much fuel and often leverage the gravitational pull of solar system objects to hasten their travel to (relatively) faraway parts of the universe. Tonight, Lucy will do exactly that, slingshotting around Earth to gain the speed it needs for its journey to explore the Trojan asteroids.
As Lucy passes over Earth tonight, it will be traveling over 33,000 miles per hour (53,100 km/hr). Lucy will spend about 20 minutes traveling through Earth's shadow and may become visible once it emerges on the other side.
Earlier this week, the European Space Agency's BepiColombo spacecraft flew by Mercury for the fifth time , as the agency plans for the spacecraft's arrival in the planet's orbit in November 2026. This November, NASA's Parker Solar Probe made its final flyby of Venus, using our next-door-neighbor's gravity to fling itself to the surface of our star. Parker's closest approach of the Sun is set to occur on Christmas Eve.
Don Pettit packed a home-made tracker to space, allowing him to bless our timelines with long-exposure images.
No comments:
Post a Comment