[ExI] Lucy mission to Jupiter Trojan asteroids

[BillK]

On Tue, 21 Sept 2021 at 18:17, Anton Sherwood via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> On 2021-9-21 08:15, BillK via extropy-chat wrote:
> > The Lucy mission is due to launch in October 2021 to visit
> > the L4 and L5 Trojan asteroids orbiting Jupiter.
>
> Both in one mission?  I wonder why.
> What does one cluster have that the other lacks?
>
> ... Oh I sorta see.  Too bad the chart does not show how Lucy will cycle
> between the two after the first L5 encounter.  I guess the alternating
> flyby is easier to reach than a permanent orbit in either trojan zone.
> Does it involve boosts on every perihelion??
>
> *\\*  Anton Sherwood  *\\*  www.bendwavy.org
> _______________________________________________


Lucy loops back around Earth between visiting each Jupiter Lagrange
point, so it gets a gravity assist back out to Jupiter. By the time
Lucy gets back to Jupiter the next Lagrange point has moved round in
Jupiter's orbit to meet Lucy.

Somebody did a fair bit of calculating to work this out!


BillK