Abstract
Abstract The Lucy Mission is a NASA Discovery-class mission to send a highly capable and robust spacecraft to investigate seven primitive bodies near both the L4 and L5 Lagrange points with Jupiter: the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. These planetesimals from the outer planetary system have been preserved since early in solar system history. The Lucy mission will fly by and extensively study a diverse selection of Trojan asteroids, including all the recognized taxonomic classes, a collisional family member, and a near equal-mass binary. It will visit objects with diameters ranging from roughly 1 km to 100 km. The payload suite consists of a color camera and infrared imaging spectrometer, a high-resolution panchromatic imager, and a thermal infrared spectrometer. Additionally, two spacecraft subsystems will also contribute to the science investigations: the terminal tracking cameras will supplement imaging during closest approach and the telecommunication subsystem will be used to measure the mass of the Trojans. The science goals are derived from the 2013 Planetary Decadal Survey and include determining the surface composition, assessing the geology, determining the bulk properties, and searching for satellites and rings.
Highlights
Jupiter Trojan asteroids have yet to be studied close up, making them one of the last accessible stable small-body reservoirs in the solar system not yet visited by a spacecraft
Owing to the critical role they play in understanding the formation and evolution of the solar system, Trojans have been a high priority for space missions for over a decade
Lucy’s requirements include a search of the full Szebehely sphere for satellites with dsat 2 km. This search will be accomplished by Lucy using Lucy LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (L’LORRI) (R-17), but it is possible to supplement this with Earth-based observations from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Keck, and other observatories
Summary
Jupiter Trojan asteroids have yet to be studied close up, making them one of the last accessible stable small-body reservoirs in the solar system not yet visited by a spacecraft. It is a surprise that Earth-based observations show that they are different from one another (these differences are explored below) This unexpected diversity may be understood in the context of a class of models developed within the last 15 yr or so, which suggest that the objects currently found in the Trojan swarms were originally formed far beyond their current home (at ∼15–30 au), and were transported to their current locations by early orbital evolution of the giant planet orbits (Tsiganis et al 2005). The relative velocity of the spacecraft with respect to the target, vrel, and the approach phase angle, f, are listed This figure assumes that Lucy launches at the beginning of its launch period on 2021 October 16. We describe the broad science objectives that motivate these requirements
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