L’Ralph: A Visible/Infrared Spectral Imager for the Lucy Mission to the Trojans

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

The Lucy Mission to the Trojan asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit carries an instrument named L’Ralph, a visible/near infrared multi-spectral imager and a short wavelength infrared hyperspectral imager. It is one of the core instruments on Lucy, NASA’s first mission to the Trojans. L’Ralph’s primary purpose is to map the surface geology and composition of these objects, but it will also be used to search for possible tenuous exospheres. It is compact, low mass (32.3 kg), power efficient (24.5 W), and robust with high sensitivity and excellent imaging. These characteristics, and its high degree of redundancy, make L’Ralph ideally suited to this long-duration multi-flyby reconnaissance mission.

Related collections

Most cited references 20

Record: found
Abstract: not found
Article: not found

Detection of ice and organics on an asteroidal surface

Andrew Rivkin, Joshua P. Emery (2010)

0 comments Cited 129 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Water ice and organics on the surface of the asteroid 24 Themis

Humberto Campins, Kelsey Hargrove, Noemí Pinilla-Alonso … (2010)

It has been suggested that Earth's current supply of water was delivered by asteroids, some time after the collision that produced the Moon (which would have vaporized any of the pre-existing water). So far, no measurements of water ice on asteroids have been made, but its presence has been inferred from the comet-like activity of several small asteroids, including two members of the Themis dynamical family. Here we report infrared spectra of the asteroid 24 Themis which show that ice and organic compounds are not only present on its surface but also prevalent. Infrared spectral differences between it and other asteroids make 24 Themis unique so far, and our identification of ice and organics agrees with independent results that rule out other compounds as possible sources of the observed spectral structure. The widespread presence of surface ice on 24 Themis is somewhat unexpected because of the relatively short lifetime of exposed ice at this distance ( approximately 3.2 au) from the Sun. Nevertheless, there are several plausible sources, such as a subsurface reservoir that brings water to the surface through 'impact gardening' and/or sublimation.