The upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory will never leave Earth, but the highly detailed, “big picture” view of the cosmos it will offer scientists could well usher in a new era in space exploration.
The solar system is filled with billions of small rocky bodies and icy objects, most of which formed about 4.5 billion years ago, when planets like Earth formed around the sun. NASA’s space missions such as OSIRIS-REx, Lucy, and Psyche are making progress in visiting these primitive solar system bodies. They were collecting images, and OSIRIS-REx even took a few samples to study on Earth; all of this is informed by data collected by observatories around the world.
Rubin, which will see its “first light” in 2025, will be capable of detecting millions of new asteroids, comets from other systems, and even potential objects passing through our planet’s backyard. Take ‘Oumuamua, for example, which was first detected in 2017. Once Rubin detects these objects, he will quickly track them as they move around the solar system and approach Earth, or even if they remain in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Mars. Jupiter.
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“Nothing comes close to the depth of Rubin’s research and the level of characterization we will achieve for solar system objects,” said Siegfried Eggl, assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and leader of the Rubin Research Group’s Inner Solar System Working Group. The Solar System Science Collaboration said in a statement. “It’s fascinating that we have the ability to visit interesting objects and look at them up close, but to do this we need to know they exist and where they are.
“This is what Rubin will tell us.”
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While conducting the 10-year Legacy Space and Time Survey (LSST), Rubin will monitor solar system bodies and cosmic objects quite distant, even beyond the boundaries of the solar system and the Milky Way galaxy.
Scanning the entire southern hemisphere sky every few nights with an 8.4-meter, fast-moving telescope and the world’s largest digital camera, Rubin is expected to greatly expand our catalog of known solar system objects, built over more than 200 years. Scientists do projects at least 5 times.
Rubin, currently under construction on the Cerro Pachón mountain in northern Chile, will not only detect numerous new solar system objects, but scientists also expect it to gather more information about the solar system’s broader “spacescape.”
This could reveal entire regions containing unique objects to consider as future space mission targets.
“If you think of Rubin as if you were looking at a beach, you see millions and millions of individual grains of sand together forming the entire beach. It could be an area of yellow sand or volcanic black sand,” Eggl said. “A space mission to an object in that region could investigate what makes it different. We often don’t know what’s strange or interesting unless we know the context it’s in.”
The observatory will also be able to alert operators within 60 seconds of detecting changes in the night sky; This could help space agencies quickly plan and deploy a mission to fast-moving objects of interest.
This could also give scientists early warning of an interstellar object like ‘Oumuamua as it passes through the solar system, allowing teams to inspect it in situ before it moves out of the intruder’s reach and back into deep space.
“Rubin is capable of giving us the lead time we need to begin the mission to capture an interstellar object,” Eggl added. “This is a synergy that is very unique to Rubin and specific to the times we live in.”
One of the projects currently being prepared to take advantage of Rubin data is the JAXA/European Space Agency Comet Interceptor mission, which will launch in 2029. The Interceptor may be visited as it passes by, waiting for sightings of a long-period solar system comet or interstellar object. in front of the sun. He will then be deployed for investigation.
Rubin could also assist with missions involving interesting objects located near the passage of a spacecraft carrying out its primary mission.
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One active mission that could benefit from Rubin’s eye on the solar system is NASA’s asteroid-hopping spacecraft Lucy. The 12-year mission aims to perform the first in-situ study of Trojan asteroids, a family of two space rocks that share Jupiter’s orbit around the sun.
Rubin was able to detect smaller, fainter asteroids near Lucy’s path to Jupiter, which opens up some new and unexpected flyby opportunities for the NASA mission.
“With our existing telescopes, we were mainly looking at large rocks on the beach,” Eggl said. “But Rubin will focus on finer grains of sand.”