The poet E.E. Cummings write , “ — listen : there ’s a hell / of a good world next door ; let ’s go . ” And go we shall : NASA ’s Discovery Programannounced this weekthat two robotic spacecraft name Psyche and Lucy will be setting out for nearby asteroids within the next decade .
For all our exploration over the last half - century , we still have much to memorize about our own solar system . The Discovery Program aims to help fill up in those gaps .
“ Lucy will inflict a object - rich environment of Jupiter ’s mystical Trojan asteroids , while Psyche will analyse a unique metal asteroid that ’s never been visited before , ” NASA ’s Thomas Zurbuchensaidin a instruction . “ This is whatDiscovery Programmissions are all about — boldly going to places we ’ve never been to enable groundbreaking science . ”
Lucy is schedule to set in motion in 2021 and should arrive at her first stop , an asteroid in Jupiter ’s master belt , four years afterwards . The craft will then learn six of the ancient Trojan asteroids , which may have formed a mere 10 million years after the Sun .
Harold Levison of the Southwest Research Institute is main tec on the Lucy military mission . “ Because the Trojans are remnants of the primeval material that formed the outer planets , ” heexplainedin a affirmation , “ they hold critical clues to deciphering the history of the solar organisation . Lucy , like the human fogey for which it is constitute , will overturn the apprehension of our origins . ”
The Psyche mission , directed by scientists at Arizona State University , will move up off in 2023 . It will reach the metal asteroid , ring 16 Psyche , between Mars and Jupiter by 2030 , then orbit and notice it for another 20 months . The asteroid is made almost entirely out of nickel note - iron metallic element similar to those at the core of rocky planet like Earth .
NASA / ASU SESE commission to the Psyche asteroidfromASU NowonVimeo .
“ The noesis this commission will produce has the potentiality to dissemble our thinking about world scientific discipline for generation to come,”saidASU president Michael Crow .
