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NASA's Lucy probe is set to fly on April 20, 2025

NASA's Lucy probe is scheduled to make a significant flyby of the asteroid Donaldjohanson on Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025. Here are some detailed aspects of this mission: Mission Objectives: The Lucy mission aims to study the Trojan asteroids, which are believed to be remnants from the early solar system. By examining these asteroids, scientists hope to gain insights into the formation and evolution of the solar system. Asteroid Donaldjohanson: Named after paleontologist Donald Johanson, who discovered the famous Australopithecus fossil "Lucy," this asteroid orbits the Sun in a region known as the L4 Trojan camp, situated ahead of Jupiter in its orbit. It is one of the many Trojan asteroids that are thought to contain primitive materials. Flyby Details: During the flyby, Lucy will use its suite of scientific instruments to gather data about Donaldjohanson's surface composition, geology, and morphology. The close encounter will allow for high-resolution im...

Modeling exoplanet atmospheres

All atoms and molecules emit distinctive spectral lines across the spectrum, the details of which depend on the internal structures of the species (for example, the vibration and rotation properties of molecules) and how they are excited by their environments. Measurements of the features' brightnesses, relative intensities, and shapes enable astronomers, at least in principle, to reconstruct most of the essential properties of these environments, including species abundances, temperatures, densities, and motions. But in order to be successful, scientists need to know quantitatively exactly how the temperature, density, and so forth, affect the excitation of each atom or molecule, and then how each species emits light in response. A collision between oxygen and nitrogen molecules, for example, will affect an oxygen molecule differently than its collision with hydrogen.

from Astronomy News - Space News, Exploration News, Earth Science News, Earth Science https://ift.tt/30QiOWa

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