Lucy Mission to the Trojan Asteroids: Instrumentation and Encounter Concept of Operations

Abstract

The Lucy Mission accomplishes its science during a series of five flyby encounters with seven Trojan asteroid targets. This mission architecture drives a concept of operations design that maximizes science return, provides redundancy in observations where possible, features autonomous fault protection and utilizes onboard target tracking near closest approach. These design considerations reduce risk during the relatively short time-critical periods when science data is collected. The payload suite consists of a color camera and infrared imaging spectrometer, a high-resolution panchromatic imager, and a thermal infrared spectrometer. The mission design allows for concurrent observations of all instruments. Additionally, two spacecraft subsystems will also contribute to the science investigations: the Terminal Tracking Cameras will obtain wide field-of-view imaging near closest approach to determine the shape of each of the Trojan targets and the telecommunication subsystem will carry out Doppler tracking of the spacecraft to determine the mass of each of the Trojan targets.

Asteroid astrometry as a fifth-force and ultralight dark sector probe

“…VRO will discover a factor of 5 more Solar System minor objects (see Table 1 of [62]), while other optical sky surveys such as Catalina [61], Pan-STARRS [113], AT-LAS [114], DECam [115], and ZTF [116] will also be of great use to such studies. The LUCY space mission [117] will visit Trojan asteroids and the JANUS spacecraft will investigate two binary asteroids [118,119], providing valuable information to extend our study thereto. New astrometrical techniques such as occultation can substantially improve orbital trajectory determinations [120].…”

A Sublime Opportunity: The Dynamics of Transitioning Cometary Bodies and the Feasibility of $\textit{In Situ}$ Observations of The Evolution of Their Activity

“…The Juno mission (Bolton et al 2017) reached Jupiter in less than 5 years, launched from Earth in 2011 on an Atlas V, with a launch energy per mass of 31.1 km 2 /s 2 , and using a combination of deep space maneuvers (∆V∼ 7.3km/s) and orbit adjustments (∆V< 2km/s), reached Jupiter in 2016 (Kowalkowski et al 2012). The upcoming Lucy mission will fly to the Trojan region at L4, and visit several Jupiter Trojan asteroids (Olkin et al 2021). While the L4 and L5 points may be scientificallyappealing parking locations as an opportunity to visit Points along each trajectory correspond to evenly spaced sampling of the trajectory through time, where large and small circles correspond to two different cadences.…”