{"id":13362,"date":"2019-02-02T00:18:23","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T16:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/ula-wins-contract-to-launch-nasas-lucy-mission-to-visit-unexplored-asteroids\/"},"modified":"2019-02-02T00:18:23","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T16:18:23","slug":"ula-wins-contract-to-launch-nasas-lucy-mission-to-visit-unexplored-asteroids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/ula-wins-contract-to-launch-nasas-lucy-mission-to-visit-unexplored-asteroids\/","title":{"rendered":"ULA wins contract to launch NASA\u2019s Lucy mission to visit unexplored asteroids"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
File photo of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5-401 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. Credit: United Launch Alliance<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA has selected United Launch Alliance\u2019s Atlas 5 rocket to dispatch the Lucy spacecraft on a mission from Cape Canaveral in October 2021 to fly by seven unexplored asteroids, including six objects locked in orbits leading and trailing Jupiter, where scientists expect swarms of miniature worlds could hold clues about the formation of the solar system.<\/p>\n

The space agency announced the contract award to ULA on Thursday, extending the company\u2019s history of launching prominent interplanetary missions, a list that includes still-operating probes such as the InSight and Curiosity landers to Mars, the Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter, New Horizons in the Kuiper Belt, and the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission.<\/p>\n

Built by Lockheed Martin, the Lucy spacecraft will lift off aboard an Atlas 5 rocket with a four-meter (13-foot) diameter payload shroud and no solid rocket boosters, a variant known as the \u201c401\u201d configuration. The launch will occur at ULA\u2019s Complex 41 launch pad at Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could not be more pleased that NASA has selected ULA to launch this amazing planetary science mission,\u201d said Tory Bruno, ULA\u2019s president and chief executive officer. \u201cThis mission has a once-in-a-lifetime planetary launch window, and Atlas 5\u2019s world-leading schedule certainty, coupled with our reliability and performance provided the optimal vehicle for this mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

The launch window for the Lucy mission opens Oct. 16, 2021, and extends several weeks. If the launch is delayed beyond the 2021 launch window, a backup opportunity is available approximately one year later, according to Simone Marchi, Lucy\u2019s deputy project scientist from the Southwest Research Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Atlas 5 rocket has launched 79 times achieving 100 percent mission success, and we look forward to working again with our mission partners to explore our universe,\u201d Bruno said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The launch contract is valued at $148.3 million, a figure that includes the launch service and other mission-related costs, according to NASA.<\/p>\n

ULA said NASA selected the Atlas 5 rocket after a \u201ccompetitive launch service task order evaluation\u201d by the space agency\u2019s Launch Services Program. ULA\u2019s Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets are certified to launch NASA\u2019s robotic interplanetary science missions, alongside SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 launcher. Both companies are expected to submit bids for each task order competition managed the Launch Services Program.<\/p>\n

After launching aboard the Atlas 5 rocket, Lucy will a combination of on-board thrusters and three gravity assist flybys with Earth to spiral into an elongated orbit around the sun, first to encounter a main-belt asteroid between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter in 2025, then to explore six objects farther out in the solar system five times farther from the sun than the Earth.<\/p>\n

Lucy will be the first mission to visit a class of solar system objects known as the Trojan asteroids, which orbit in tandem with Jupiter, with groups ahead of and behind the giant planet in its path around the sun.<\/p>\n

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Artist\u2019s concept of the Lucy spacecraft flying by Trojan asteroids. Credit: NASA\/SWRI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Scientists believe the Trojan asteroids represent a diverse sample of the types of small planetary building blocks that populated the solar system after its formation 4.5 billion years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s anything we\u2019ve learned in the last 30 years, it\u2019s the planets like Earth do not form, excuse the pun, in a vacuum,\u201d said Hal Levison, Lucy\u2019s principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder. \u201cThey form as a result of a complex interaction of various regions of the solar system handing material back and forth as the planets accreted. As a result, to understand where a planet like the Earth comes from, you really have to understand the system as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why NASA has launched, or is developing, nearly a dozen robotic missions to explore asteroids, comets and objects in the distant Kuiper Belt \u2014 all in the last 25 years. Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA\u2019s science directorate, said the space agency is investing between $5 billion and $6 billion in missions to small bodies in the current decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason why these (objects) are particularly interesting is because they are sculpted by the formation of the planetary system, and most of the material in it has remained roughly unchanged since the beginning of the solar system, and that\u2019s why NASA has put so much effort into trying to understand these bodies,\u201d Levison said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLucy will launch in just about 1,000 days, which is a little intimidating to me,\u201d Levison said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have a main-belt asteroid rehearsal in 2025, and five Trojan encounters going between 2027 and 2033, for a total of six objects because one of the objects we\u2019re studying is going to be a binary, which is, I must admit, my favorite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Initially thought to be the remnant leftovers from the formation of Jupiter, the Trojan asteroids actually appear different from one another, with some appearing reddish in color, and others have a dark charcoal-like color.<\/p>\n

Levison co-authored the Nice model, which suggests the solar system\u2019s four giant planets \u2014 Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune \u2014 all formed relatively close together, with a disk of dust and rocks extending farther from the sun.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Nice model predicts that this planetary system was unstable,\u201d Levison said. \u201cThe orbits went basically nuts. Uranus and Neptune gravitationally scattered off one another and were thrown out into this disk of material by Jupiter and Saturn. The disk went kablooey because of the gravitational effects of the planets, and \u2026 most of the material was thrown out into interstellar space, but you have a small population right about Jupiter, which represents the Trojans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just a theory, but if this is all true, then the Trojan population represents objects that formed throughout that disk (in the early solar system), so it\u2019s an opportunity for us to understand that disk by just going to the small region that we call the Trojans,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order to take advantage of this diversity, we need to be able to cover a lot of real estate, and study a lot of these objects,\u201d Levison said.<\/p>\n

After Lucy\u2019s launch, the spacecraft will return to fly by Earth on Oct. 16, 2022, and Dec. 13, 2024, to use the planet\u2019s gravity to slingshot farther from the sun.<\/p>\n

\"\"
During the course of its mission, Lucy will fly by six Jupiter Trojans. This time-lapsed animation shows the movements of the inner planets (Mercury, brown; Venus, white; Earth, blue; Mars, red), Jupiter (orange), and the two Trojan swarms (green) during the course of the Lucy mission. Credit: Astronomical Institute of CAS\/Petr Scheirich<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The probe will encounter its first extraterrestrial target on April 20, 2025, when it speeds by the 2.4-mile-wide (3.9-kilometer) asteroid Donaldjohanson, named for the paleoanthropologist who discovered the fossil of Lucy, a human ancestor whose partial skeleton was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974.<\/p>\n

\u201cLucy is named after the human ancestor fossil because these objects really represent the fossils of planet formation, so in honor of that, we named this asteroid Donald Johanson, the discoverer of Lucy,\u201d Levison said.<\/p>\n

Lucy will fly by four objects in one of the Trojan swarms over a 15-month period from August 2027 through November 2028, then return back to Earth for another gravity assist flyby on Dec. 26, 2030, to bend the spacecraft\u2019s trajectory to aim for a binary pair of Trojan asteroids \u2014 named Patroclus and Menoetius \u2014 on March 2, 2033.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a flyby mission,\u201d Levison said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to just about everything that we can do during a flyby. We\u2019re going to look at surface geology, we\u2019re going to get colors, we\u2019re going to get compositions, we\u2019re going to be able to measure the mass of these objects as we fly by using the Doppler shift, and we\u2019re going to look for satellites and rings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lucy\u2019s four major science instruments \u2014 largely based on hardware flown on previous interplanetary missions \u2014 will be mounted to an articulating platform at the top of the spacecraft, which stands around 15 feet (5 meters) tall and has two fan-shaped UltraFlex solar array wings built by Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, formerly known as Orbital ATK. Lucy\u2019s chemical propulsion system will be fueled by hydrazine for major in-space maneuvers.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft is expected to weigh no more than 3,163 pounds (1,435 kilograms) at launch, with fuel loaded, Levison said.<\/p>\n

NASA selected Lucy in 2017 from 28 proposals submitted by U.S. science teams as part of the Discovery line of cost-capped planetary probes, a program under which the agency\u2019s Mars Pathfinder rover, the Messenger mission to orbit Mercury, the Dawn spacecraft that visited Vesta and Ceres in the asteroid belt, and the InSight lander currently on Mars were developed, built and launched.<\/p>\n

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The Hubble Space Telescope captured this view of the Patroclus-Menoetius binary pair in February 2018. Credit: SWRI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In addition to Lucy, NASA selected the Psyche mission to explore a unique asteroid made almost entirely of iron-nickel metal. Psyche will launch in August 2022 and reach its destination in January 2026.<\/p>\n

The Lucy and Psyche missions costs to NASA are capped at $450 million each, excluding launch costs.<\/p>\n

Here is a preliminary timeline of Lucy\u2019s mission:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Launch: <\/strong>Oct. 16, 2021<\/li>\n
  • Deep Space Maneuver 1: <\/strong>Nov. 15, 2021<\/li>\n
  • Earth Flyby 1: <\/strong>Oct. 16, 2022<\/li>\n
  • Deep Space Maneuver 2: <\/strong>Feb. 2, 2024<\/li>\n
  • Earth Flyby 2: <\/strong>Dec. 13, 2024<\/li>\n
  • Donaldjohanson Flyby: <\/strong>April 20, 2025<\/li>\n
  • Deep Space Maneuver 3: <\/strong>April 3, 2027<\/li>\n
  • Eurybates Flyby: <\/strong>Aug. 12, 2027<\/li>\n
  • Polymele Flyby: <\/strong>Sept. 15, 2027<\/li>\n
  • Deep Space Maneuver 4: <\/strong>Sept. 29, 2027<\/li>\n
  • Leucus Flyby: <\/strong>April 28, 2028<\/li>\n
  • Orus Flyby:<\/strong> Nov. 11, 2028<\/li>\n
  • Earth Flyby 3: <\/strong>Dec. 26, 2030<\/li>\n
  • Patroclus\/Menoetius Flyby: <\/strong>March 2, 2033<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

    Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    File photo of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5-401 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. Credit: United Launch Alliance NASA has selected United Launch Alliance\u2019s Atlas 5 rocket to dispatch the Lucy spacecraft on a mission from Cape Canaveral in October 2021 to fly by seven unexplored asteroids, including six objects locked in orbits leading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1519,724,1708,1913,25,472,2711,190],"class_list":["post-13362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-asteroids","tag-atlas-5","tag-complex-41","tag-discovery-program","tag-launch","tag-lockheed-martin","tag-lucy","tag-nasa"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13362"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}