NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has “phoned house” after first high-speed asteroid encounter

A spacecraft exploring an asteroid belt efficiently “phoned house” to NASA after a high-speed asteroid encounter on Wednesday. 

The spacecraft, named Lucy, has a major mission of exploring Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, a collection of asteroids trapped within the fuel big’s orbit. The brand new high-speed encounter was with a small fundamental belt asteroid that NASA referred to as Dinkinesh, which is “10 to 100 occasions smaller” than the Trojan asteroids. The flyby served as an in-flight check of Lucy’s “terminal monitoring system,” NASA mentioned in a information launch. 

Based mostly on info despatched to NASA when Lucy “phoned house,” the spacecraft is taken into account to be “in good well being” and has been commanded to start out relaying information obtained in the course of the encounter to researchers. This course of will take a few week, NASA mentioned in a information launch detailing the spacecraft’s mission, and can present how Lucy carried out in the course of the encounter. 

NASA mentioned that the spacecraft possible handed the asteroid at about 10,000 miles per hour. Throughout this time, the spacecraft’s monitoring system was speculated to “actively monitor the placement” of the small asteroid and transfer autonomously to make these observations. 

A number of options on the spacecraft had been meant to be activated in the course of the encounter, together with a high-resolution digital camera that took a collection of photos each 15 seconds whereas passing shut by the asteroid. A colour imager and an infrared spectrometer had been additionally meant to be activated. Lucy additionally is supplied with thermal infrared devices that aren’t made to look at an asteroid as small as Dinkinesh, NASA mentioned, however researchers are excited by seeing if the instruments had been capable of detect the asteroid anyway. 

Whilst Lucy strikes away from the asteroid, information will nonetheless be collected, with the spacecraft utilizing a few of its instruments to “periodically” observe Dinkinesh for an additional 4 days. 

Lucy launched into area in 2021 on a 12-year mission to discover eight asteroids. 

The spacecraft is called after the three.2 million-year-old skeletal stays of a human ancestor present in Ethiopia, which bought its identify from the 1967 Beatles tune “Lucy within the Sky with Diamonds.” That prompted NASA to launch the spacecraft into area with band members’ lyrics and different luminaries’ phrases of knowledge imprinted on a plaque, the Related Press reported. The spacecraft additionally carried a disc product of lab-grown diamonds for considered one of its science devices.