Just try to imagine that you’re going on with your day, and you expect nothing surprising. Just when you start hanging out with your friends, you encounter an individual who looks nothing like the human beings that we are. It may be a scenario from a sci-fi movie, but it could surely become a reality one day.
NASA’s Lucy probe is engaging in a space mission just for that: finding alien life. Although it may be far from how any of us would imagine them, the American space agency suspects that extraterrestrial creatures could exist on trojan asteroids. Therefore, it will send the Lucy probe there to find out for sure, according to The Hill.
The lift-off is scheduled for October 16
NASA will send the Lucy spacecraft to the trojan asteroids on October 16, and hopefully, nothing will occur to spoil the fun. More precisely, Lucy will go somewhere around two of the Jupiter-Sun Lagrange points.
But if you’re now asking yourself what on Earth are Lagrange points, here’s what NASA has to say:
Lagrange points are positions in space where objects sent there tend to stay put. At Lagrange points, the gravitational pull of two large masses precisely equals the centripetal force required for a small object to move with them.
But NASA also has more to say about space rocks:
The dark-red P- and D-type Trojans resemble those found in the Kuiper Belt of icy bodies that extends beyond the orbit of Neptune. The C-types are found mostly in the outer parts of the Main Belt of asteroids, between Mars and Jupiter. All of the Trojans are thought to be abundant in dark carbon compounds. Below an insulating blanket of dust, they are probably rich in water and other volatile substances.
Most astronomers believe that it’s only a matter of time until humanity will find life forms elsewhere in the Universe!