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Surveying the “Fossils of Planet Formation”: The Lucy Mission
Lucy, an SwRI mission proposal to study primitive asteroids orbiting near Jupiter, is one of five science investigations under the NASA Discovery Program up for possible funding. Credit: swri.org
In February of 2014, NASA’s Discovery Program put out the call for mission proposals, one or two of which will have the honor of taking part in Discovery Mission Thirteen. Hoping to focus the next round of exploration efforts to places other than Mars, the five semifinalists (which were announced this past September) include proposed missions to Venus, Near-Earth Objects, and asteroids.
When it comes to asteroid exploration, one of the possible contenders is Lucy – a proposed reconnaissance orbiter that would study Jupiter‘s Trojan Asteroids. In addition to being the first mission of its kind, examining the Trojans Asteroids could also lead to several scientific finds that will help us to better understand the history of the Solar System.
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Read the rest of Surveying the “Fossils of Planet Formation”: The Lucy Mission (742 words)
© mwill for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: asteroid, Discovery Program, gas giants, Goddard Space Center, Jupiter, kuiper belt, Lucy, NASA, Neptune, Saturn, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), trojan asteroids, Uranus
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Source: http://www.universetoday.com/122822/surveying-the-fossils-of-planet-formation-the-lucy-mission/
