Lucy, Discovery Mission 13 - a grand tour of the Jupiter Trojans |
Lucy, Discovery Mission 13 - a grand tour of the Jupiter Trojans |
Jan 4 2017, 08:20 PM
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 71 Joined: 12-December 16 Member No.: 8089 |
Obligatory new thread for the Lucy mission, now that it has been selected by NASA to launch as Discovery mission 13! Lucy will launch in 2021, and will perform a flyby of a main belt asteroid in 2025, before making flybys of at least six Jupiter trojans from 2027 to 2033. The mission, led by the Southwest Research Institute and Principal Investigator Harold F. Levison, will send a spacecraft carrying updated versions of New Horizons' LORRI and RALPH instruments.
Be sure to check out r/lucymission on reddit as well! EDIT: I have made a mistake. Could a kind mod please move this thread to the "Cometary and Asteroid Missions" subforum? ADMIN: Done. Note for the new members: Generally speaking, please consult a member of the admin/mod team before creating new topics. Not a hard rule, but it does help to keep the place tidy. Also, we encourage all members to review this welcome post for orientation purposes. Thanks! |
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Oct 30 2021, 02:29 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2106 Joined: 13-February 10 From: Ontario Member No.: 5221 |
Lucy was never in storage for an extended period due to delays. I'm sure they're thinking over every possibility. Although we all hope the array finishes deploying, I have been thinking that if this isn't fixed by the time of the Earth flyby next year, the low altitude combined with the size of the arrays, might make it possible to resolve the stuck array directly with Earth-based imagery?
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Oct 31 2021, 02:30 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
An object 300 km from a telescope on the ground might enable imagery with resolution as good as about 10 cm per pixel… but that assumes a lot, including good weather at the sub-spacecraft point, which is completely beyond anyone's control or ability to predict, as well as two geometric factors that are knowable in advance, but not known to me: Will the spacecraft be near closest approach over land vs. the 70% of Earth that is water, and will the spacecraft be in sunlight at the time of closest approach, but not lost in daylight? This all sounds well below 50% probability, but not impossible.
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Oct 31 2021, 03:00 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2542 Joined: 13-September 05 Member No.: 497 |
An object 300 km from a telescope on the ground might enable imagery with resolution as good as about 10 cm per pixel… Color me skeptical that this is 1) possible or 2) useful, but feel free to check out the geometry -- the best trajectory info so far is https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/LUCY/ker...-TCM36-P_v2.bsp -------------------- Disclaimer: This post is based on public information only. Any opinions are my own.
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