SPACE reports the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), which has an April 13 launch date, will take eight years to travel to its destination. The travel time is longer than other missions to the planet, but needed to allow a number of gravity assist maneuvers and because the spacecraft will need to not just reach Jupiter but to be moving slowly enough to enter its orbit.
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Tag: Jupiter
NASA’s Lucy to Visit Eight Asteroids
The AP reports that NASA “is set to launch a series of spacecraft to visit and even bash some of the solar system’s most enticing space rocks.” The Lucy probe is to launch this weekend “on a 12-year cruise to swarms of asteroids out near Jupiter – unexplored time capsules from the dawn of the solar system.” A month later, the Dart impactor will strike a double-asteroid’s moonlet in an attempt to change its orbit.
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NASA’s Lucy Mission to Observe Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroid Swarms
CNN reports that the Lucy mission, the first NASA mission to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroid swarms, “has passed all of its prelaunch tests and is set to leave Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at around 5:30 a.m. ET on October 16.” These asteroids “are remnants from the early days of our solar system” and “the mission will help researchers effectively peer back in time to learn how the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.” Tom Statler, Lucy project scientist at NASA Headquarters, said: “With Lucy, we’re going to eight never-before-seen asteroids in 12 years with a single spacecraft. This is a fantastic opportunity for discovery as we probe into our solar system’s distant past.” CNN reports that “the Lucy spacecraft is more than 46 feet (14 meters) from tip to tip, largely due to its giant solar panels – each about the width of a school bus – designed to keep up a power supply to the spacecraft’s instruments.”
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