Exploring deep space for Earth’s origins
Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio partners with NASA on two missions to study primitive asteroids
NASA officials announced Wednesday that they will support two missions to study ancient asteroids in hopes of learning more about the early days of our solar system.
One of those missions, Lucy, will be led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio. Researchers there will use a Lockheed Martin robotic spacecraft to study the Trojans, primitive asteroids orbiting Jupiter. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2021 and explore asteroids between 2025 and 2033.
“This is a unique opportunity,” said Harold F. Levison, a program director and chief scientist in SwRI’s Boulder office and the principal investigator of the mission. “Because the Trojans are remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets, they hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system. Lucy, like the human fossil for which it is named, will revolutionize the understanding of our origins.”
In all, the Lucy mission will study six Trojans and one main belt asteroid.
“One of the most puzzling characteristics of the Trojans is that they are very different from one another,” Levison said. “This diversity was caused by the evolution of the outer planets and, as such, can be used to detangle their history.”
Several members of the Lucy mission are also veterans of the New Horizons mission, the 2015 flyby of Pluto and its moves. Alan Stern of the SwRI was the principal investigator for that mission. More recently, the Institute played a pivotal role in the Juno mission to Jupiter last summer.
The other mission announced Wednesday will explore 16 Psyche, a giant metal asteroid that could be an exposed core of an early planet once the size of Mars.
The Psyche mission could help scientists understand how planets and other bodies separated into their layers, including cores, mantles and crusts.
“This is an opportunity to explore a new type of world — not one of rock or ice, but of metal,” said Psyche Principal Investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University in Tempe. “16 Psyche is the only known object of its kind in the solar system, and this is the only way humans will ever visit a core. We learn about inner space by visiting outer space.”
The robotic mission is scheduled to launch in 2023 and arrive at the asteroid in 2030 following a Mars flyby in 2025.
“These are true missions of discovery that integrate into NASA’s larger strategy of investigating how the solar system formed and evolved,” said NASA’s Planetary Science Director Jim Green. “We’ve explored terrestrial planets, gas giants, and a range of other bodies orbiting the sun. Lucy will observe primitive remnants from farther out in the solar system, while Psyche will directly observe the interior of a planetary body.
“These additional pieces of the puzzle will help us understand how the sun and its family of planets formed, changed over time, and became places where life could develop and be sustained and what the future may hold.”
Both the Lucy and Psyche missions will be part of NASA’s Discovery program, relatively low-cost missions in the big picture of space exploration.