Lucy Could Visit An Additional Sub-km Asteroid With A Course Correction

Lucy Could Visit An Additional Sub-km Asteroid With A Course Correction
By Andy Tomaswick (https://ift.tt/N6yFpuA)

Lucy is already well on its way to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. But that doesn't mean that it can’t make some improvements to its trajectory along the way. A new paper suggests it might be possible to nudge Lucy into a slightly different orbit, allowing it to pass an as-yet-undiscovered asteroid sometime during its exploration of the L5 cloud of Trojan around Jupiter. If completed, it could lend an entirely new research target to Lucy’s repertoire and further define the differences between the two Trojan clouds.

August 11, 2025 at 05:04PM
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