NASA’s “autumn of asteroids” – 11/05/2023 – Sidereal Messenger

NASA closed its “autumn of asteroids” with a flourish last Wednesday (1st), when the Lucy probe carried out its first flyby of an asteroid and discovered that it got two for the price of one: Dinkinesh (“you’re wonderful “, in Amharic, Ethiopian language) is a double star, which has its own moon.

The feat comes in the wake of a series of events that marked the season, such as the return of the Osiris-Rex mission capsule, on September 24, bringing samples from the carbonaceous asteroid Bennu, and the launch of the Psyche mission, on October 13, destined to visit a metallic asteroid located in the belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Launched in 2021, Lucy’s main destination is a family of asteroids located in the region of Jupiter, the Trojans. The name comes from the fact that, when the first of these stars were discovered, they were given names inspired by Homer’s Iliad, which tells the story of the Trojan War. They accompany the giant planet in its orbit, preceding or following it on its paths around the Sun.

Before getting there, however, the probe passes through the belt between Mars and Jupiter, where it will have the opportunity to fly over another asteroid in 2025, in addition to the recently visited Dinkinesh. The encounter served as a kind of test drive for the spacecraft’s instruments, which proved to be accurate in tracking and recording the object. It was up to the onboard computer to automatically control, without intervention from mission control on the ground, the direction of the cameras, as the ship passed the binary asteroid at 16,000 km/h.

The first images revealed that Dinkinesh is irregularly shaped and about 790 meters long, while its companion is 220 meters long.
Scientists still hope to learn much more about the pair after they receive the full set of data from the flyby, which should happen this week.

At this point, the reader may find this recent and frenetic interest in asteroids strange. Here are two good reasons to study them closely. First, these objects bring clues to elucidate the mysteries of the birth of the Solar System, as they are essentially remnants of what was left of the disk of gas and dust that gave rise to the planets, 4.5 billion years ago. The probe’s name, Lucy, is a tribute to the famous 3.2 million-year-old Australopithecus fossil with an important role in the study of human ancestry. The idea is that it will study the “fossils” of planetary formation.

The second reason: it is imperative to expand our knowledge about the variety of existing asteroids in order to protect the Earth from a future dangerous impact.

Last year, NASA demonstrated, with the Dart probe, the feasibility of diverting the course of an asteroid. But the degree of effectiveness of the technique depends, among other factors, on the composition, density and consistency of the target, something that can vary. Lucy should contribute a lot to this task over the next ten years, visiting a total of 11 asteroids of various types (three in the belt and eight Trojans).

This column is published on Mondays in print, in Folha Corrida.

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