NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will add another asteroid encounter to its 4-billion-mile journey. On November 1, 2023, Lucy will get a close-up view of a small main-belt asteroid to conduct an engineering test of the spacecraft’s innovative asteroid-tracking navigation system. The Lucy mission is already
’s Lucy spacecraft will add another asteroid encounter to its 4-billion-mile journey. On November 1, 2023, Lucy will get a close-up view of a small main-belt asteroid to conduct an engineering test of the spacecraft’s innovative asteroid-tracking navigation system.
“There are millions of asteroids in the main asteroid belt,” said Raphael Marschall, Lucy collaborator at the Nice Observatory in France, who identified asteroid 1999 VD57 as an object of special interest for Lucy. “I selected 500,000 asteroids with well-defined orbits to see if Lucy might be traveling close enough to get a good look at any of them, even from a distance. This asteroid really stood out.
The Lucy team realized that, by adding a small maneuver, the spacecraft would be able to get an even closer look at this asteroid. So, on January 24, the team officially added it to Lucy’s tour as an engineering test of the spacecraft’s pioneering terminal tracking system.
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