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Mahesh

28/04/22 22:54 PM IST

Lucy mission

In News 
  • NASA’s Lucy mission — set to explore a group of asteroids that follow behind and in front of Jupiter’s orbit — hit a snag recently when one of its solar arrays failed to unfurl.
Lucy Mission 
  • The Lucy mission is a NASA probe that will explore a set of asteroids near Jupiter known as the Trojans.
  • These ancient space rocks hold important clues to the creation of our solar system and, potentially, the origin of life on Earth.
  • Lucy is named for a famous female Australopithecus afarensis fossil found in Ethiopia that, as a relative of modern humans, helped illuminate the evolution of our species.
  • It is hoped that the spacecraft Lucy will similarly elucidate our solar system's earliest days. 
  • Launched in October 2022, this is NASA’s first mission to explore the Jupiter Trojan asteroids.
  • It is a solar-powered mission.
  • It is estimated to be over 12 years long, during the course of which the spacecraft will visit eight asteroids covering a distance of about 6.3 billion km to deepen the understanding of the “young solar system”.
Trojan Asteroids
  • The probe's main objects of study are the Trojan asteroids.
  • These objects are thought to be remnants from the primordial disk that formed the sun and planets, which were captured by Jupiter's gravity sometime near the beginning of the solar system.
Source-PIB

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