Some time ago NASA sent its Lucy Probe into space. The mission of this Lucy Probe was to go into space and study Trojan Asteroids. Even after entering the orbit of Jupiter, these asteroids are still moving around Jupiter.
However, how are they escaping from Jupiter’s gravity? Therefore, for their study, NASA sent the Lucy Probe to research these asteroids. Lucy Probe went to these asteroids, but suddenly a signal is received that this 12-year planned mission of NASA is going to fail in the next 12 minutes.
Why NASA Worried for Lucy Probe
The question was why NASA was worried about the failure of this mission when the mission had not even failed yet. The cost of NASA’s moon mission is 4.1 billion dollars and the cost of the Lucy probe was 989.1 million dollars, which means that the cost of the Lucy mission (Lucy Probe) was 4 times less than the cost of the moon mission.
So here it was clear that NASA was not worried about profit or loss in this mission, but the reason was something else. Why did NASA name this mission Lucy Probe? NASA named this mission Lucy. NASA gave this name to a female fossil found in 1974 because her name was also Lucy. The story of this Fossil is so interesting, after hearing it you will understand yourself why this mission (Lucy Probe) was named Lucy.
Story of Lucy
The day was November 24, 1974. After wandering the hot graveyards of Ethiopia all afternoon, the archeologist there was angry and returning to his campus. But suddenly, while moving towards his car parked far away, one of them noticed a bone sticking out of the ground. It turned out to be the first fossils that could prove that there was someone who could walk upright before humans.
Everyone was very happy to find this fossil and went to sleep at night after drinking wine and playing Lucy song and when they opened their eyes in the morning, they found that the name of this fossil has been spelled Lucy. They were all so drunk that night that they didn’t know who named her Lucy. Now overnight, Lucy was going to be famous for not one but two reasons, one serious and second funny. NASA wanted to take advantage of this fame.
Trojan Asteroids Discovery
When NASA discovered the first Trojan asteroid, it turned the discovery of our solar system upside down. In fact, on 26 February 1906, Max Wolf was studying the space, then he noticed that Jupiter was moving in the orbit of the Sun, but right next to Jupiter, or you could say that an asteroid was also moving in the orbit of Jupiter, but how could this happen? May be possible.
The definition of a planet is that everything that comes in its path is either thrown out of the solar system by its gravity or pulled inward or else those objects become part of the planets. . But in this case, despite the gravity of Jupiter, the Trojan Asteroid was moving in front of Jupiter. Here Max Wolf was finding out what is the truth behind it, suddenly he saw a Trojan Asteroid right behind Jupiter.
Scientists were completely surprised here that earlier an asteroid was moving in front of Jupiter, now the newly discovered asteroid is moving behind Jupiter. After all, what has been happening? Here, this case has proved the definition of simple planet wrong or it means that we can no longer call Jupiter a planet. Both of these asteroids are situated at the langrage point of Jupiter, where things fit, whether it is Lucy Probe or Trojan asteroid, it starts to behave much differently than our expectation.
Here both asteroids are located at langrage point 4 and langrage point 5 where the Sun’s gravity cancels each other. So here there is no gravitational force on these asteroids. So this is a point where any probe sent to it or our Lucy Probe can study these asteroids comfortably without being influenced by Jupiter. But here a question arises that in the last fifteen years no space agency has sent a probe here! The answer is quite simple. The reason for not sending any probe or mission to these asteroids was the complex math of the journey between them.
If you look at the Lucy Probe Mission Plan Path, you will know that Lucy Probe will first study the asteroid in front of Jupiter with the help of Earth’s gravity and then come back to Earth, then with the help of Earth’s gravity, it will study Jupiter. He will study the asteroid behind, it was just a complication. You can see in the image above that this Lucy probe is going to pass several inner belt asteroids at once in this mission, which means one small mistake and game over. But the Lucy Probe sent a signal to NASA before reaching that belt.
What signal send Lucy Probe?
In fact, when the solar panels of Lucy Probe were about to open, one of the panels named Y+ did not open, putting the entire mission in danger. This happened because according to the mechanism of this panel, the motor behind them was going to open the solar panel through a rope, then it happened that the rope that opened the panel slipped into the motor, which the NASA team said now. Nothing can happen. In this situation, NASA had two do-or-die conditions.
- One is to allow Lucy Probe to enter that belt without tampering with the motor, it will make some difference in the study, but a compromise had to be made.
- Second , NASA took the risk of fixing the solar panel of the Lucy Probe, a small error could cause the entire mission to fail.
NASA chose the second option out of these two options, which means NASA took a risk. First of all, NASA saw how open the solar panel of Lucy Probe was, they did this blindly because there was no camera to know how open the solar panel was.
They took a unique approach, they vibrated the thruster of the Lucy Probe and collected some data from which NASA found that the panel was only open 347° degrees, which means that if it is to be opened, the motor has to be turned on with extra power. . Here the scientists came up with an idea to turn on the primary and backup motor of Lucy Prove together, which will release the rope stuck in the motor and open the solar panel. NASA did the same and Done NASA’s Lucy Probe Mission back in action.
This mission of NASA was very important. NASA installed many features in this Lucy Probe. For example, L’Ralph, who will detect the fingerprints of each compound hidden in the traces of the compound hidden on the asteroid, will clearly describe each object of the asteroid. Therefore, this mission could not be compromised in any way.
Explain Instrument of Lucy Probe
A light from Trojan Asteroids will enter the Entrance Baffle, then the LEISA detector will detect this light in infrared and visible light and finally this light will split and go to different sensors and give us the information of different compounds.
When light falls on the LEISA detector, LEISA will give information about five different compounds. One level above this is the L’TES instrument which will measure the asteroid’s thermal inertia i.e. the cooling time and create a heat map from this heat map. Because the thermal inertia of all particles is different.
NASA has also installed a L’LORRI camera which can take a high resolution image of a bee sitting in a stadium from one corner to another. Along with all these instruments, NASA has also added a time capsule on which we have left some messages for our descendent on a tablet, because NASA’s plan is that the Lucy Probe mission of those Trojan asteroids for thousands of years. He is going to study, his images and information will be given to our coming new generation, because we are going to live for a thousand years
