Trojan asteroids accompany several of our solar system's planets, leading or trailing the planet in its orbit at the L4 and L5 Lagrange points. Detecting our own planet's Trojan asteroids from Earth is difficult because they appear close to the sun from our perspective. In mid-February 2017, NASA's OSIRS-REx mission will search for these elusive objects when the spacecraft passes by Earth's L4 Lagrange point, en route to asteroid Bennu in 2018.
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NASA ID
GSFC_20170209_Trojan_m12504_OSIRIS_REx
Date Created
February 9, 2017
Center
GSFC
Media Type
video
Photographer
Robert Andreoli, John Caldwell, Walt Feimer, Michael Lentz, Lisa Poje, Adriana Manrique Gutierrez, Kel Elkins, Heather Roper
Location
Goddard Space Flight Center
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