Anne Verbiscer, a research professor in the University of Virginia’s astronomy department, will soon be working with NASA to take a closer look at Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids.
Verbiscer is one of eight participating scientists NASA selected to join its Lucy mission to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids – presumed remnants of the early solar system that share Jupiter’s orbit around the sun. Launched in 2021, Lucy will have close fly-bys of four Trojan asteroids – two of which are known to have small moons – in 2027 and 2028.
NASA’s Lucy mission, named after the 3.2 million-year-old skeleton that helped illuminate human origins, hopes to clarify how the solar system formed through the study of Trojan asteroids that lead and follow Jupiter in orbit around the sun.
Anne Verbiscer’s asteroid observations may help NASA shed light on the origins of the solar system. (University Communications file photo)
“We are looking for how our solar system was put together, how the planets formed, and ultimately how life began,” Verbiscer said. “That’s the big question being answered.”
Verbiscer’s contributions to the mission will come from Earth-based observations of Trojan asteroids not slated to be observed by Lucy.
“Passing by these objects, Lucy will not observe them at ‘full phase,’ akin to viewing our own moon when it is full – not even really close,” Verbiscer said. “But we can do that from Earth with other asteroids that are analogous to those fly-by targets. They’re in the same place in the solar system. They were formed the same way. And we will use those observations to help interpret what Lucy gets.”
The information collected will be applied to scientific hypotheses.
“Solar system formation theories tell us that the Jupiter Trojan asteroids should have come from the outer solar system, but we don’t know that,” Verbiscer said. “Hopefully the Lucy mission will answer that question.”
Verbiscer will study the surface structure of the asteroids using her access to a variety of ground-based telescopes around the world.
“Many telescopes these days accommodate remote observing,” Verbiscer said. “You just open up your laptop and get hooked up with the observatory. Using UVA’s institutional access, I use Apache Point Observatory (New Mexico) as a remote observer routinely, about eight nights a year.”
