Space: The Final Frontier

[CaaC (John)+]

Erm...not just yet buddy 

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How’s the weather in Proxima Centauri?

Stellar flares with a chance of radio bursts, it seems.

Artist’s impression of a stellar flare from Proxima Centauri ejecting material onto a nearby exoplanet. Credit: Mark Myers

Wild space weather may mean most of the exoplanets in the Milky Way are uninhabitable, according to new research.

Over the past decade, astronomers have discovered more than 4300 planets orbiting distant stars and the list is growing every week. But this study, published in The Astrophysical Journal, suggests that planets orbiting M-type red dwarf stars will have to contend with violent weather conditions.

The Australian and US team used optical and radio telescopes to observe our closest star – Proxima Centauri, just 4.2 light-years away – as it simultaneously emitted powerful stellar flares and radio bursts, providing the first definitive link between these two events in a star other than our Sun.

But here in our Solar System, these events are linked to coronal mass ejections – massively energetic blasts of ionised plasma and radiation. Lead researcher Andrew Zic, from the University of Sydney, says it’s highly likely similar intense events occur on M-type red dwarfs.

“This is probably bad news on the space weather front,” says Zic. “It seems likely that the galaxy’s most common stars – red dwarfs – won’t be great places to find life as we know it.”

Astronomers previously knew that Proxima Centauri is home to two rocky planets. One is particularly exciting because it exists in the habitable zone around the star, where it receives enough warmth for liquid water to hypothetically exist. However, the habitable zones of small, cool red dwarfs are tucked in close to the star – much closer than Mercury is to our Sun – which could put planets in the path of the star’s ferocious weather.

“What our research shows is that this makes the planets very vulnerable to dangerous ionising radiation that could effectively sterilise the planets,” Zic explains.

This radiation would severely erode a planet’s atmosphere, leaving it exposed to further dangers such as intense X-rays or UV light.

Stars like our Sun also emit such radiation, but since the Sun is much hotter, Earth sits in the habitable zone much further away.

Some of the dishes of the ASKAP telescope in Western Australia. Credit: Kim Steele

“Further, the Earth has a very powerful planetary magnetic field that shields us from these intense blasts of solar plasma,” says Zic.

Whether exoplanets have magnetic fields or not is still an open question for astronomers.

“But even if there were magnetic fields, given the stellar proximity of habitable-zone planets around M-dwarf stars, this might not be enough to protect them.”

Since M-type red dwarfs like Proxima Centauri comprise 70% of the stars in the Milky Way, the finding may narrow down our search for habitable planets and extraterrestrial life.

The observations were made using telescopes across the world, including the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) in Western Australia, the Zadko Telescope at the University of Western Australia, and NASA’s planet-hunting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Observing with multiple telescopes over several wavelengths allowed the team to make the crucial link between the optical and radio flares.

“The probability that the observed solar flare and received a radio signal from our neighbour were not connected is much less than one chance in 128,000,” Zic says.

Co-author Bruce Gendre from the University of Western Australia says that research is a significant step towards using the radio signals from nearby stars to produce space weather reports beyond our own Solar System.

“Understanding space weather is critical for understanding how our own planet biosphere evolved – but also for what the future is,” he concludes.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/hows-the-weather-in-proxima-centauri/

 

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Mind blowing. 

 

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James Van Allen was known for his belts

Apollo astronauts can thank the would-be sailor.

A January 2017 article in Popular Mechanics magazine, with the headline “How NASA got Apollo astronauts through the dangerous Van Allen belts”, describes some of the “many difficulties” encountered by the US Apollo space program, which ran from 1961 to 1972.

“The issue of the Van Allen belt and its radioactivity was a particularly serious concern while planning the [Apollo 11 flight to land men on the moon] mission,” it says.

This “deadly radiation of space”, as it was described in a Fox TV special, “Conspiracy Theory: Did we land on the moon?”, which first aired in 2001, was submitted as evidence that the 20 July 1969 moon landing may have been faked.

The Van Allen belts, named for US physicist James Van Allen, are described by Space.com as “giant doughnut-shaped swaths of magnetically trapped, highly energetic charged particles” that surround Earth.

Van Allen discovered these radiation belts in 1958 after the launch of Explorer 1, the first US satellite.

He had been born 44 years earlier, on 7 September 1914, on a farm in Iowa, a landlocked agricultural region in the middle of the US. Naturally, he dreamed of going to sea.

Credit: NASA

After graduating from his hometown Mount Pleasant High School in 1931, as valedictorian, he decided to join the US Navy.

In 2004, to help celebrate Van Allen’s 90th birthday, fellow space researcher and former NASA chief research scientist George H Ludwig prepared a “biographical sketch” in which he described his friend’s naval experience.

“All went well initially, but when he appeared for his physical examination, he was rejected for three reasons: he had flat feet, his eyesight was somewhat deficient, and he didn’t know how to swim.”

With his navy hopes scuttled, Van Allen entered Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant.

In an article in the 1990 Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Van Allen describes this phase of his education. He took all the courses offered in physics, chemistry and mathematics, a summer field course in geology, “and the one available course in astronomy … the only formal course in astronomy that I ever took”.

He cites a professor, Thomas Poulter, in physics, as a principal inspiration, noting that he was in the process of preparing for a role as chief scientist on the Second Byrd Antarctic Expedition.

“I became a part of those preparations,” Van Allen says. “I helped build a simple seismograph and was entrusted with checking out a field magnetometer on loan from the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, one of the most beautiful instruments that I have ever seen.”

He used the magnetometer to make precise measurements of the geomagnetic field at three random Iowa locations.

In 1935 he entered the University of Iowa and in 1939 earned a PhD with a dissertation titled “Absolute Cross-Section for the Nuclear Disintegration H2 + H2 -> H1 + H3 and Its Dependence on Bombarding Energy”.

Van Allen took on research in fields including cosmic radiation, geomagnetism, atmospheric structure, ionospheric physics, high-altitude photography of the Earth’s surface, and the ultraviolet and X-ray spectra of the Sun.

The years of study came together when NASA launched Explorer I on 31 January 1958, carrying a cosmic-ray measurement instrument designed and built by a team led by Van Allen, which was selected as the principal element of the payload of the first flight of a four-stage Jupiter C rocket.

Van Allen looking at the cone-shaped Pioneer probe.
Credit: NASA

Van Allen explains in his 1990 article: “Both the vehicle and our instrument worked. The data from the single Geiger-Mueller tube on Explorer I (as the payload was called) yielded the discovery of the radiation belt of the earth – a huge region of space populated by energetic charged particles (principally electrons and protons), trapped within the external geomagnetic field.

“The launch of Explorer III on 26 March 1958, with an augmented version of the Iowa instrument, was successful. The Explorer III data provided massive confirmation of our earlier discovery and clarified many features of the earlier body of data.” 

On 10 August 2006, NASA announced that Van Allen had died the previous day, with NASA administrator Michael Griffin calling him “one of the greatest and most accomplished American space scientists of our time”.

Griffin said few researchers “had such a wide range of expertise in so many scientific disciplines”, adding that “NASA’s path of space exploration is far more advanced today because of Dr Van Allen’s groundbreaking work”.

Along with the 1958 discovery of what are now called Van Allen belts, encircling the Earth, he also is credited with the discovery of a new moon of Saturn in 1979, and radiation belts around that planet.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astrophysics/james-van-allen-was-known-for-his-belts/

 

[Stan]

This looks pretty cool.

All summer I've seen them 'next' to each other, which I thought was very close.

To be able to see them get closer will be great. Two behemoths in the solar system getting closer and closer to the naked eye.

Just hope we have clear skies on some nights to see them shine.

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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Space tourism: Virgin space plane set for first crewed flight

Virgin Galactic is set to carry out a milestone test flight of its rocket-powered tourist plane on Saturday.

This will be the first crewed flight of its reusable Unity vehicle to take off from the purpose-built commercial spaceport in New Mexico, US.

Sir Richard company will begin space tourism flights in 2021.

Already, more than 600 paying customers - including Justin Bieber and Leonardo DiCaprio - are booked to take a ride on the plane.

• The woman who paid $250,000 to go into space
• Astronaut crew launch to the space station
• Light pollution's wasted energy seen from space

Virgin Galactic gives a glimpse of what it will look like inside the Unity vehicle

Saturday's flight will be the first of three final demonstration flights before that commercial service begins.

It is on the third of these that Sir Richard Branson himself will test the service he's been promising for 16 years. Before that can happen Virgin Galactic needs to go through some final preparatory steps.

Saturday's mission will have just the two pilots on board - former Nasa astronaut CJ Sturckow and Galactic chief test pilot Dave Mackay.

They will run checks on all their plane's operating procedures by making the first-ever powered climb above Spaceport America, the centre that was developed specifically for this commercial operation by the New Mexico state government.

It has been a long road for the company's engineers to get the technology to where they want it, and progress this year has, of course, been slowed by the Covid-19 crisis, with limited numbers of staff able to work both in New Mexico and at Galactic's manufacturing base in California.

Will Whitehorn, president of the UK Space Industry Group, described the flight as a huge milestone.

"This is going to be a very safe and low-cost system," he told BBC News. "Developing it has been ground-breaking and it hasn't been easy."

A fatal accident back in 2014 led to an investigation and the redesign of some elements of the system.

"But when it comes to space, you're not in a race with anyone. You're in a race to be safe," said Mr Whitehorn.

The craft will also serve as an astronaut training facility.

"At the moment, we have to train them in simulated environments - swimming pools and so-called vomit comets, which are planes that dive out of the sky," he explained.

"So as well as space tourism and space science, that training will be a crucial component of the industrial revolution that is coming to space."

Virgin Galactic recently unveiled the design of the tourist cabin.

Passengers will sit in seats that move to manage G-forces in the different phases of flight - on the boost up to space and on the descent back to Earth.

They'll get personal seat-back screens that display live flight data, and the 12 large windows - more than any other spacecraft in history, according to the company - are designed to ensure no passenger has to compete for a view when they unbuckle at the top of the climb to float free inside the cabin.

There will even be a big mirror at the aft end so they can see themselves weightless. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55279067

 

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The sample return mission was successful. 

 

 

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What our clouds might tell us about Venus

Aerobiology, microorganisms and prospects of life.

Credit: Mendowong Photography / Getty Images

Researchers in the emerging field of aerobiology are using microorganisms swept up in the Earth’s atmosphere to probe the prospects for life in the clouds of Venus and on planets circling other stars.

These organisms aren’t just in breezes blowing dust across the ground. Viable organisms have been found all the way into the stratosphere and may extend to the edge of space.

“We don’t know where Earth’s biosphere stops above our heads,” says David Smith, an aerobiologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, who was one of several scientists to address the topic yesterday at the virtual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. “It looks like everywhere we sample in the atmosphere we find biomarkers of life.”

Not that it’s always easy to obtain these samples.

At low elevations, they can be acquired by putting fog collectors on mountaintops, using them to sift water droplets out of scudding clouds.

Microbes in these droplets initially swept off the Earth’s surface by wind, says Kevin Dillon, a microbiologist at Rutgers University. Once aloft, they use the clouds like a highway to hitch a ride from one part of the globe to another.

Some of these airborne microbes aren’t even dormant, says Diana Gentry an astrobiologist at NASA Ames. Instead, they are metabolically active – though, she notes, researchers haven’t yet observed them being so active that they reproduce when aloft.

Higher up, Smith says, researchers use a plane capable of soaring at an altitude of 12,000 metres or employ balloons capable of going higher yet. These collect biological “debris” and in some instances even complete microorganisms that can be nursed back to life.

But so far, Gentry says, all of the viable organisms found that far up are dormant: not surprising, because the stratosphere is cold, dry, and exposed to harsh solar radiation. “We’ve only seen inactive life,” she says.

On Earth, there is as yet no evidence that life can linger in the atmosphere indefinitely. “Any microbes that get lifted up come back down,” Smith says. But that doesn’t mean it has to be the same on Venus, where the atmosphere is different and much thicker than ours.

Furthermore, says Noam Izenberg of Johns Hopkins University, planetary scientists are starting to realise that Venus’s surface may not always have been the inferno it presently is.

Rather, it may have spent billions of years at the right temperature for surface water. This means that before the oceans vanished and life was snuffed out lower down, it might have found its way into the clouds that now shroud the planet’s surface.

“One thing that makes me excited is the possibility of life today in these clouds,” Izenberg says.

Planetary scientists hope to see a mission head to Venus to sample these clouds in the not-too-distant future. That wouldn’t just be something to please Venus enthusiasts; it would also be useful to scientists studying exoplanets, Gentry says, because Venus-like worlds may prove more common than Earthlike ones.

Meanwhile, the more scientists learn about life in the Earth’s atmosphere, the more they hope to understand the range of what might be possible elsewhere.

“We are looking for the limits of life on Earth,” Dillon says.

cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/what-our-clouds-might-tell-us-about-venus/

 

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China has successfully retrieved the capsule with the lunar samples! Says they will share the samples with other countries. 

 

 

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Would be the perfect ending for 2020

 

 

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Christmas star: Planets set to align in the night sky

Jupiter and Saturn are set to cross paths in the night sky, appearing to the naked eye as a "double planet".

The timing of this conjunction, as the celestial event is known, has caused some to suggest it may have been the source of a bright light in the sky 2,000 years ago.

That became known as the Star of Bethlehem.

The planets are moving closer together each night and will reach their closest point on 21 December.

Keen stargazers in the UK will have to keep a close eye on the weather to avoid an astronomical disappointment.

"Any evening it's clear, it's worth grabbing a chance because the weather doesn't look great," Dr Carolin Crawford from the University of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy told the BBC.

• What was the star of Bethlehem?
• Light pollution's wasted energy seen from space
• Juno snaps giant Jupiter polar storms

If there is a gap in the winter gloom, both planets will appear in the southwest sky, just above the horizon shortly after sunset.

What hope for UK star-gazers? From Simon King, BBC Weather

Monday is going to be a wet and windy day for many but come evening, most of the cloud and rain will be clearing away. Therefore, there should be plenty of clear spells developing across most parts of the UK. The exception to this may be in the southwest of England, south and west Wales where cloud will stick around with further rain spreading in. If you leave it too late in the night in southern England and the Midlands, that cloud and rain will be spreading in here through the night.

Is this the return of the Star of Bethlehem?

Some astronomers and theologians think so.

As Prof Eric M Vanden Eykel, a professor of religion from Ferrum College in Virginia pointed out in an online article the timing has led to a lot of speculation "about whether this could be the same astronomical event that the Bible reports led the wise men to Joseph, Mary and the newly born Jesus".

That is not just modern, festive speculation. The theory that the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn might be the "Star of Wonder" was proposed in the early 17th Century by Johannes Kepler, a German astronomer and mathematician.

"2,000 years ago, people were a lot more aware of what was happening in the night sky," said Dr Crawford, "[so] it's not impossible that the Star of Bethlehem was a planetary alignment like this".

How rare is the event?

As planets cross paths on their journey around the Sun, conjunctions are not particularly rare, but this one is special

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55364664

 

Edited December 19, 2020 by CaaC (John)

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SLS: Crucial test for Nasa's 'mega-rocket'

The core of a giant Nasa rocket that will return astronauts to the Moon has undergone a crucial test.

For the first time, engineers fully loaded a core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with super-cold liquid propellant, controlled it and then drained the tanks.

That propellant is fuel and an oxidiser - a chemical that makes the fuel burn.

Engineers wanted to check things worked as expected before the SLS makes its maiden flight in about a year's time.

It was part of a testing programme known as the Green Run, that is being carried out at Nasa's Stennis Space Center, near Bay St Louis in Mississippi.

This evaluation, known as the wet dress rehearsal (WDR), was the seventh of eight tests on the core stage. Nasa said the rocket responded well to the propellant being loaded. But the test experienced an unexpected shutdown a few minutes earlier than was planned.

However, the completion of the WDR should set up the eighth and final test - a "hot-fire" - where all four RS-25 engines at the base of the core will be fired together for the first time.

FULL REPORT

 

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Astronaut Scott Kelly: How to survive a year in space

Astronaut Scott Kelly tells the BBC how he managed to live for a year on the International Space Station and why, four years into his retirement from Nasa, he would go back if someone asked.

It's 16 July 2015, and all three occupants of the International Space Station are squeezing into the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that acts as their lifeboat in the event of an emergency.

The crew members have been told by mission control that a large, defunct satellite is hurtling their way at 14km per second. Controllers know it will come close, but they can't track the object precisely enough to know if it will skim by or score a devastating bullseye.

US astronaut Scott Kelly and Russians Gennady Padalka and Mikhail "Misha" Kornienko hunker down in the cramped capsule, waiting for the speeding hunk of metal to close in, following the procedures drawn up for such an eventuality by preparing to detach from the station at a moment's notice and return to Earth.

• Astronaut Capt Scott Kelly's year in space
• ISS crewmembers end the year in space

It's hardly the first time Mr Kelly, a former military pilot, has been in a life-threatening situation. But the experience caused him to ponder their collective powerlessness; had the satellite hit, there would have been no time to getaway

"Misha, Gennady and I would have gone from grumbling to one another in our cold Soyuz to being blasted in a million directions as diffused atoms, all in the space of a millisecond," he recalls in his memoir Endurance.

Crew rotations on the ISS come with many of the mundane features of everyday life on Earth: video calls, cleaning and bad days at work. But every now and then - as on this occasion - astronauts get a stark reminder of the hostile environment beyond the comforting walls of their vessel.

FULL REPORT

 

 

 

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The first photograph of Earth taken from space

On 24 October 1946, rocket scientists captured the first images of Earth taken from space.

This is the first photograph of Earth ever taken from space. It was captured on 24 October 1946 from a rocket 105 km above the ground that had been launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, USA.

The rocket was a German V2, captured by the Americans at the end of World War II. Hundreds of scientists and engineers from the Nazi rocket program were vital to the postwar development of the American and Russian space programs.

Though the V2 had rained terror on London and other cities during the war, in peacetime the explosive warhead was removed and replaced with a package of scientific instruments. These included a 35mm motion-picture camera set to snap one picture every second and a half.

The resulting images, developed from film dropped back to Earth in a tough steel canister, were like nothing that had been seen before. Until this point, the highest vantage point from which photos had been taken was some 22 km, aboard a high-altitude balloon.

The balloon pictures had shown the curvature of the Earth at the horizon, but the rocket photos opened new possibilities. Clyde Holliday, the engineer who developed the camera, saw the potential: in a 1950 National Geographic article, he predicted that one day “the entire land area of the globe might be mapped in this way”.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/the-first-photograph-of-earth-taken-from-space/

 

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Life and Death of a Planetary System

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Space images: The best of 2020

There was stunning cosmic imagery to feast on in 2020, from Hubble's 30th birthday image to footage of a daring sample grab on an asteroid. Here's our pick of the year's offerings.

Hubble's 'cosmic reef'

The Hubble telescope, one of the most important scientific tools ever built, celebrated its 30th anniversary in April.

To mark the occasion, an amazing image was released showing a star-forming region close to our Milky Way galaxy.

In this magnificent Hubble portrait, the giant red nebula (NGC 2014) and its smaller blue neighbour (NGC 2020) reside in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located 163,000 light-years away.

Nebulas are vast interstellar clouds of dust and gas where star formation can take place.

At the heart of NGC 2014 is a clutch of bright stars, which are each 10 to 20 times more massive than our Sun.

The image was nicknamed the "cosmic reef", because astronomers thought the nebulas resembled an undersea world.

A BBC Horizon documentary, broadcast to coincide with the anniversary, showcased stunning 3D visualisations of iconic Hubble images - such as the Pillars of Creation, part of the Eagle Nebula.

See also: Hubble telescope's Universe revealed in 3D

MORE & VIDEOS

 

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Japan developing wooden satellites to cut space junk

A Japanese company and Kyoto University have joined forces to develop what they hope will be the world's first satellites made out of wood by 2023.

Sumitomo Forestry said it has started research on tree growth and the use of wood materials in space.

The partnership will begin experimenting with different types of wood in extreme environments on Earth.

Space junk is becoming an increasing problem as more satellites are launched into the atmosphere.

Wooden satellites would burn up without releasing harmful substances into the atmosphere or raining debris on the ground when they plunge back to Earth.

• Orbiting space junk collision 'avoided'
• Balloon 'taxi service' to take satellites to space
• UK Space Agency funds tech for orbital awareness

"We are very concerned with the fact that all the satellites which re-enter the Earth's atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years," Takao Doi, a professor at Kyoto University and Japanese astronaut, told the BBC.

"Eventually it will affect the environment of the Earth."

"The next stage will be developing the engineering model of the satellite, then we will manufacture the flight model," Professor Doi added.

As an astronaut, he visited the International Space Station in March 2008.

During this mission, he became the first person to throw a boomerang in space that had been specifically designed for use in microgravity

FULL REPORT

 

[nudge]

Huh? How exactly is it going to reduce space junk? Instead of metal junk orbiting the Earth you will just have wooden junk floating in orbit... Space junk is space junk because it doesn't de-orbit, doesn't matter if it's wood or any other material.  What a misleading headline.

[CaaC (John)+]

12 minutes ago, nudge said:

Huh? How exactly is it going to reduce space junk? Instead of metal junk orbiting the Earth you will just have wooden junk floating in orbit... Space junk is space junk because it doesn't de-orbit, doesn't matter if it's wood or any other material.  What a misleading headline.

私たちはとても狡猾です
Watashitachi wa totemo kōkatsudesu     

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5 minutes ago, CaaC (John) said:

私たちはとても狡猾です
Watashitachi wa totemo kōkatsudesu     

@nudge I knew you would put the confused one in that should read we are very crafty [Japanese], they will do anything to sell their merchandise.  

[nudge]

Just now, CaaC (John) said:

@nudge I knew you would put the confused one in that should read we are very crafty [Japanese], they will do anything to sell their merchandise.  

It's not the headline of the Japanese, though... It's poor reporting by the BBC. 

[CaaC (John)+]

Just now, nudge said:

It's not the headline of the Japanese, though... It's poor reporting by the BBC. 

That's the Beeb for you, now if NASA had mentioned it then I would imagine it's a good idea but there are other options being put forward of clearing space junk maybe a lot better but we will have to wait and see.  

Space junk: Worse than you think (pictures)

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Images of the Milky Way sound like this

Welcome to the world of sonification in space.

VIDEO & FULL REPORT

Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand, M. Russo & A. Santaguida

Telescopes allow us to “see” space. Astronomers translate their digital data into images of a world that would otherwise be invisible to us. For a rather different take on things, a NASA project is translating the data into sounds instead, allowing us to “listen” to the centre of the Milky Way as observed in X-ray, optical and infrared light. The process is known as sonification.

 

Edited January 4, 2021 by CaaC (John)

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Jan. 5, 2021

NASA’s First Mission to the Trojan Asteroids Integrates its Second Scientific Instrument

NASA’s Lucy mission is one step closer to launch as L’TES, the Lucy Thermal Emission Spectrometer has been successfully integrated on to the spacecraft.

“Having two of the three instruments integrated onto the spacecraft is an exciting milestone,” said Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, Lucy project manager from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The L’TES team is to be commended for their true dedication and determination.”

Lucy will be the first space mission to study the Trojan asteroids, leftover building blocks of the Solar System’s outer planets orbiting the Sun at the distance of Jupiter. The mission takes its name from the fossilized human ancestor (called “Lucy” by her discoverers) whose skeleton provided a unique insight into humanity’s evolution. Likewise, the Lucy mission will revolutionize our knowledge of planetary origins and the birth of our solar system more than 4 billion years ago.

L’TES, developed by a team at Arizona State University (ASU), is effectively a remote thermometer. It will measure the far-infrared energy emitted by the Trojan asteroids as the Lucy spacecraft flies by an unprecedented seven of these objects during this first-ever mission to this population.

The instrument arrived at Lockheed Martin Space on December 13 and was successfully integrated on to the spacecraft on December 16.  By measuring the Trojan asteroids’ temperatures, L’TES will provide the team with important information on the material properties of the surfaces.  As the spacecraft will not be able to touch down on the asteroids during these high-speed encounters, this instrument will allow the team to infer whether the surface material is loose, like sand, or consolidated, like rocks. In addition, L’TES will collect spectral information using thermal infrared observations in the wavelength range from 4 to 50 micrometres.

“The L’TES team has used our experienced designing, manufacturing, and operating similar thermal emission spectrometers on other missions such as OSIRIS-REx and the Mars Global Surveyor as we built this instrument,” said Instrument Principal Investigator, Phil Christensen. “Each instrument has its own challenges, but based on our experience we expect L’TES to give us excellent data, as well as likely some surprises, about these enigmatic objects.”

Despite the challenges surrounding the COVID-19 pandemics, Lucy is on schedule to launch in October 2021 as originally planned.

“I am constantly impressed by the agility and flexibility of this team to handle any challenges set before them,” said mission Principal Investigator, Hal Levison of Southwest Research Institute. “Just five years ago this mission was an idea on paper, and now we have many major components of the spacecraft and payload assembled, tested, and ready to go.” 

In addition to L’TES, Lucy’s High Gain Antenna, which will enable spacecraft communication with the Earth for navigation and data collection, as well as precise measurement of the masses of the Trojan asteroids, was recently installed.  It joined L’LORRI, Lucy’s highest-resolution camera, built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which was installed in early November. Lucy’s remaining scientific instrument, L’Ralph, the mission’s colour imaging camera and infrared spectrometer, is scheduled to be delivered in early 2021.

Southwest Research Institute’s Hal Levison and Cathy Olkin are the principal investigators and deputy principal investigator of the Lucy Mission. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center provides overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space is building the spacecraft. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASA’s Discovery Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.

Nancy Neal Jones
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Katherine Kretke
Southwest Research Institute