Photo: Southwest Research Institute
People around the globe spotted a bright light zipping through the sky on Sunday morning — but it wasn’t a shooting star.
That light wasNASA’s Lucy spacecraft, which passed 200 miles above the Earth’s surface during the one-year anniversary of its mission.
Lucy, whichNASA says was visiblearound 7:04 a.m. ET, passed Western Australia and eventually the Pacific Ocean, giving Earth residents something to observe as the spacecraft was on its way to explore the Trojan asteroids orbiting Jupiter.
In order to zip past our planet, Lucy had to navigate dense areas of satellites and debris, meaning special procedures had to be put in place to prevent any accidents, and to avoid a “potentially catastrophic collision,” Coralie Adam, the team chief for the Lucy deputy navigation team from KinetX Aerospace, said.
Lucy, which is the main part of a $981 million mission, first hit the sky in October 2021, with a 12-year mission goal of exploring the Trojan asteroids, which have yet to be observed in the history of space exploration.
The exploration means Lucy may finally be able to provide the first high-resolution images of the asteroids. The spacecraft was named after Lucy, the fossilized human ancestor, which was named after The Beatles song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”
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“The Lucy Team in Boulder and Littleton, Colorado were stuck with overcast skies, but two intrepid team members made a roadtrip to Scottsbluff, Nebraska and spotted Lucy with a telescope and shared what they saw,” the Lucy Mission Twitter account shared. “Whoot!”
source: people.com
