Through the years, the POT has been in charge of leading various space projects of great importance, although some are usually better known than others, as in the case of the Lucy mission which is currently causing a lot of buzz in the scientific community. And although his task is important, had gone unnoticed for the last few months until it became relevant again thanks to a discovery that involves her.
The mission that sent a space probe close to the orbit of Jupiter began its journey on October 16, 2021. From that moment to date, this space project has been active with a great responsibility on it since it has an important objective that could help discover various details of the Earth.
mission details
The goal of this NASA mission is for the probe to explore a set of asteroids near Jupiter known as the Trojans. These ancient space rocks contain important clues about the creation of our solar system and potentially the origin of life on Earth.
According to information shared on the NASA web portal, asteroids are believed to be remnants of the primordial disk that formed the sun and planets, which were captured by Jupiter’s gravity sometime near the birth of our solar system. .
Why is the Lucy mission causing such a stir?
Although Lucy’s original journey involved only interaction with seven asteroids near Jupiter, some NASA scientists discovered another potential target for the probe in 2020, so one more was added to form eight large space rocks to explore, all this before the ship left for space.
But now that it’s off the ground, the project is back in the limelight with astronomers as they discover a new target that could be a satellite orbiting near a Trojan asteroid, which had remained hidden to date. In this regard, the scientific community is excited about what this celestial body can contribute to the original research of the Lucy mission.