A probe intended to study the Trojan asteroids takes off shortly | Hacker News Reader

A probe intended to study the Trojan asteroids takes off shortly

economist.com

29 pointsvaryherb11 comments

The orbital physics used is always impressive.

I assume some velocity adjustment is done by the drone to intersect with the asteroids? Or are the orbits that precise?

They are very precise. Take note of this video, recreating one of the real missions that took place four decades (!) ago. It recreates the orbit in Kerbal Space Program with a mod called Principia that enables N-body simulation using original mission specs and calculations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3PCCJZzVvg

The spacecraft will make corrections with its onboard thrusters over the course of the mission.

Feels like there should be some good open source tools by now to plot optimal orbital paths and speed and slowing down.

Thank you for pointing this out. Non-paywalled info, plus even more & nicer graphics:

https://nasa.gov/mission_pages/lucy/overview/index

http://lucy.swri.edu/

don't miss

http://lucy.swri.edu/mission/Targets.html

How feasible is it to build/launch your own probe? A la backyard astronomy.

It seems kind of crazy that they would visit the Greeks, then do another flyby of Earth in order to visit the Trojans. I wonder what the cost-benefit analysis was of doing that versus just sending separate probes to each of those (which presumably would need a lot less fuel)?

Is this one of those things where this really is the best and cheapest option and my intuition of orbital mechanics is just wrong?

The flybys provide course changes for very little fuel, including pretty significant velocity boosts. It's not uncommon for a probe to spend a while ping-ponging around the inner system just to get enough speed to reach the outer planets. I doubt the probe has a whole lot of delta-v left once it leaves Earth the first time, probably just enough for course corrections so it can hit the flybys precisely.

What ever happened to the interplanetary highway idea?

The path of this probe to get those encounters looks like magic. How do they find these?

Now I know. Thanks, Scott Manley!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbwSSdtWUNE

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