NASA is seeking to explore one of the earliest periods in the solar system by sending out two new missions, the Lucy and Psyche missions, which are set to launch in 2021 and 2023, respectively.
With the robotic spacecraft Lucy launching in October, it is expected to arrive at a main belt asteroid sometime in 2025. Between 2027 and 2033, Lucy is also set to travel around six Jupiter Trojan asteroids. According to researchers, these Trojans are remnants of an earlier period in the solar system and could have been created outside of Jupiter’s orbit.
“Because the Trojans are remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets, they hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system," Lucy mission principal investigator Harold F. Levison explained.
Therefore, launching Lucy will bring on new approaches in understanding of the origins of the planets.
Lucy is expected to make use of the upgraded RAPLH and LORRI science instruments, which aided NASA’s New Horizons mission to attain its goal in Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.
“This is what Discovery Program missions are all about – boldly going to places we’ve never been to enable groundbreaking science,” Zurbuchen added.
Meanwhile, the Psyche mission will be launched to explore the 16 Psyche, a giant asteroid that is believed to be made up mostly of metallic iron and nickel, the same as that of the Earth’s core. Such belief has led researchers to question whether the Psyche could have also been a core of a planet from an earlier time. If such were the case billions of years ago, its outer layers were likely to have been damaged by frequent collisions.
Looking into the possibilities of these missions, Lucy and Psyche are set to aid scientists in exploring the ways with which planets ended up being separated into their cores and crusts early on in the solar system’s history.
