Question: Trojan asteroids in our Solar system share the orbit of which of the following planet?
a) Mars
b) Venus
c) Jupiter
d) Saturn
Answer: (c)
Related Facts:
- On 16 October 2021; NASA’s Lucy mission was launched to study the Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids.
- It was the US space agency’s first mission to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, which was launched through a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket.
- It should be known that Trojan asteroids simply known as Trojans, these are a large group of asteroids that share the Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun.
- Atlas V rocket lifted with the mission Lucy from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
- Over the next 12 years, Lucy will fly by one main-belt asteroid and seven Trojan asteroids.
- This journey will make it the agency’s first single spacecraft mission in history to explore so many different asteroids.
- Lucy will investigate these fossils of planetary formation up close during its journey.
- According to NASA’s Administrator Bill Nelson, Lucy embodies NASA’s enduring quest to push out into the cosmos for the sake of exploration and science.
- He said that the agency always strive to better understand the universe and our place within it through its ever ambitious missions.
- About an hour after launch, Lucy separated from the second stage of the ULA Atlas V 401 rocket.
- Its two massive solar arrays, each nearly 24 feet (7.3 meters) wide, successfully unfurled about 30 minutes later and began charging the spacecraft’s batteries to power its subsystems.
- Scientists say that the Lucy is rich with opportunity to learn more about these mysterious Trojan asteroids and better understand the formation and evolution of the early solar system.
Links:-
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-ula-launch-lucy-mission-to-fossils-of-planet-formation