NASA selects project with UCF scientist to explore asteroid

[Buster's Uncle]

NASA selects project with UCF scientist to explore asteroid
UCF professor on team sending probe to Jupiter asteroid belt
Orlando Sentinel
By Marco Santana • January 9, 2017, 11:43 AM



A mockup of a satellite doing a flyby on a Jupiter asteroid



A University of Central Florida physics professor is leading a science team that will help explore some of the oldest asteroids in the solar system.

NASA last week formally selected the Lucy space probe mission, which is expected to launch in 2021 and by 2027 will tour six asteroids that surround Jupiter.

UCF professor Dan Britt will serve on the Southwest Research Institute’s science team for the mission.

“It should be a lot of fun,” said Britt, who has been a part of two previous NASA science mission, in a release. “This mission has six flybys of the asteroids because of its trajectory and it has relatively low risks. Given the information we will be able to collect, it is quite an attractive mission.”

The goal is to study the so-called Jupiter Trojans in an effort to discover more information about the formation of Jupiter.

“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,” said principal investigator Harold Levison, a planetary scientist at the Institute. “Lucy, like the human fossil for which it is named, will revolutionize the understanding of our origins.”

Britt also has an asteroid named after him.


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