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NASA's Lucy Spacecraft Is Speeding toward Another Close Encounter with an Asteroid

This image from video animation provided by NASA in October 2022 depicts the Lucy spacecraft. (NASA via AP)
This image from video animation provided by NASA in October 2022 depicts the Lucy spacecraft. (NASA via AP)
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NASA's Lucy Spacecraft Is Speeding toward Another Close Encounter with an Asteroid

This image from video animation provided by NASA in October 2022 depicts the Lucy spacecraft. (NASA via AP)
This image from video animation provided by NASA in October 2022 depicts the Lucy spacecraft. (NASA via AP)

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will swoop past a small asteroid this weekend as it makes its way to an even bigger prize: the unexplored swarms of asteroids out near Jupiter.

It will be the second asteroid encounter for Lucy, launched in 2021 on a quest that will take it to 11 space rocks. The close approaches should help scientists better understand our early solar system when planets were forming; asteroids are the ancient leftovers.

The upcoming flyby is a dress rehearsal for 2027 when Lucy reaches its first so-called Trojan asteroid near Jupiter.

Cranking up its three science instruments, the spacecraft on Sunday will observe the harmless asteroid known as Donaldjohanson. The encounter will take place 139 million miles (223 million kilometers) from Earth in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, so far away it will take 12 minutes for each bit of data to reach flight controllers in Colorado.

The paleontologist for whom the asteroid is named plans to be at spacecraft builder and operator Lockheed Martin’s Mission Control for all the action. He discovered the fossil Lucy in Ethiopia 50 years ago; the spacecraft is named after the famous human ancestor.

NASA’s Lucy will venture as close as 596 miles (960 kilometers) to this asteroid, an estimated 2 ½ miles (4 kilometers) in length but much shorter in width. Scientists should have a better idea of its size and shape following the brief visit. The spacecraft will zoom by at more than 30,000 mph (48,000 kph).

The asteroid is among countless fragments believed to have resulted from a major collision 150 million years ago.

“It's not going to be a basic potato. We already know that,” said lead scientist Hal Levison of Southwest Research Institute.

Rather, Levison said the asteroid may resemble a bowling pin or even a snowman like Arrokoth, the Kuiper Belt object visited by NASA's New Horizon spacecraft in 2019. The other possibility is that there are two elongated but separate asteroids far apart.

“We don’t know what to expect. That’s what makes this so cool,” he said.

There will be no communications with Lucy during the flyby as the spacecraft turns its antenna away from Earth in order to track the asteroid. Levison expects to have most of the science data within a day.

Lucy’s next stop — “the main event,” as Levison calls it — will be the Trojan asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit around the sun. Swarms of Trojans precede and follow the solar system’s largest planet as it circles the sun. Lucy will visit eight of them from 2027 through 2033, some of them in pairs of two.

Lucy’s first asteroid flyby was in 2023 when it swept past little Dinkinesh, also in the main asteroid belt. The spacecraft discovered a mini moon around it.

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Varieties

Sunny Greece Struggles with Solar Energy Overload

Solar accounted for 23 percent of the 55 percent of electricity consumed from renewables last year. Aris MESSINIS / AFP
Solar accounted for 23 percent of the 55 percent of electricity consumed from renewables last year. Aris MESSINIS / AFP
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Sunny Greece Struggles with Solar Energy Overload

Solar accounted for 23 percent of the 55 percent of electricity consumed from renewables last year. Aris MESSINIS / AFP
Solar accounted for 23 percent of the 55 percent of electricity consumed from renewables last year. Aris MESSINIS / AFP

In a field in central Greece that once grew clover and corn, maintenance worker Nikos Zigomitros deftly drives a tractor between rows of solar panels, trimming weeds under a blazing sun.

"Letting them grow too high impairs the panel performance," the 52-year-old explains, wiping sweat from his brow.

Once a center of agricultural production, the area around Kastron Viotias, some 110 kilometers (70 miles) northwest of Athens, has seen solar parks mushroom over the past 15 years, part of a major renewable energy push in the country.

Greece currently has 16 gigawatts of renewable energy installed, with solar power representing nearly 10 gigawatts, including 2.5 gigawatts that came on line last year.

The rapid growth of solar is similar to other countries in Europe, where it has overtaken coal for electricity production, according to climate think tank Ember.

It estimates renewables have risen to account for nearly half of the EU's electricity production.

Greece did even better: 55 percent of annual consumption was covered by renewables last year, with solar accounting for around 23 percent, according to SPEF, an association which unites local solar power producers.

In 2023, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis predicted that Greece would "soon generate 80 percent of its electricity needs through renewables."

But getting there is proving complicated.

SPEF chairman Stelios Loumakis said that the solar sector has hit a wall because of a combination of factors, including Greece's small size, limited infrastructure and delays in building up energy storage capacity.

Saturated

The Greek state approved too many photovoltaic projects over the last five years and the market is saturated, leading to a "severe production surplus" on sunny days, the 56-year-old chemical engineer and energy consultant said.

Greece's national grid operator in May repeatedly ordered thousands of medium-sized operators to shut down during the sunniest hours of the day to avoid overburdening the network and triggering a blackout.

"The trick is to balance supply and demand. If you don't do it well, you get a blackout," said Nikos Mantzaris, a senior policy analyst and partner at the independent civil organization Green Tank.

In April, a huge blackout of unknown origin crippled the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish government has said two major power fluctuations were recorded in the half-hour before the grid collapse, but the government insisted renewables were not to blame.

"It could be something as mundane as a faulty cable," Mantzaris said.

Batteries 'crucial'

To manage the surplus, Greece is building battery storage capacity. But catching up to its solar electricity production will take years.

"The next three years will be crucial," said Stelios Psomas, a policy advisor at HELAPCO, a trade association for Greek companies producing and installing solar panels.

In the meantime, solar panel operators will have to ensure production does not outstrip capacity, thereby limiting their potential earnings.

"Managing high shares of renewables -- especially solar -- requires significant flexibility and storage solutions," said Francesca Andreolli, a senior researcher at ECCO, a climate change think tank in Italy, which faces a similar problem.

"Battery capacity has become a structural necessity for the electricity system, by absorbing excess renewable energy and releasing it when demand rises," she told AFP.

Farm income

Mimis Tsakanikas, a 51-year-old farmer in Kastron, readily admits that solar has been good to his family.

The photovoltaic farm they built in 2012 at a cost of 210,000 euros clears at least 55,000 euros a year, far more than he could hope to earn by growing vegetables and watermelons.

"This park sustains my home," he said.

But the father of two also notes that the environmental balance has tipped in his area, with the spread of solar installations now causing concerns about the local microclimate.

Tsakanikas says the area has already experienced temperature rises of up to 4.0 degrees Celsius (7.2 Fahrenheit), which he blames on the abundance of heat-absorbing solar panel parks in the area.

"The microclimate has definitely changed, we haven't seen frost in two years," he told AFP.

"(At this rate) in five years, we'll be cultivating bananas here, like in Crete," he said.