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The mission will consist of a relay orbiter being launched aboard a Long March 5 rocket in June of 2018. This relay will assume orbit around the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrange Point, followed by the launch of the lander and rover about six months later. In addition to an advanced suite of instruments for studying the lunar surface, the lander will also be carrying an aluminum alloy container filled with seeds and insects. “The container will send potatoes, arabidopsis seeds and silkworm eggs to the surface of the Moon. The eggs will hatch into silkworms, which can produce carbon dioxide, while the potatoes and...

For 10 days this month, OSIRIS-REx will investigate whether or not Trojan asteroids exist at certain points in Earth’s orbit called Lagrange points. Though Jupiter has Trojan asteroids, it’s unclear whether or not Earth’s Lagrange points host similar objects. After all, only one Earth Trojan has ever been found. “The Earth orbits around the Sun, and the Earth has a gravitational field and the Sun has a gravitational field,” explained Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS REx’s principal investigator. “Because of that property, there are certain points in space where those two fields balance each other out, called Lagrange points.” OSIRIS-REx will be...

The asteroid, which follows Neptune's orbit around the sun, ...classified as a Trojan, was found in a difficult-to-detect area near Neptune, known as the Lagrangian point L5. Lagrangian points are five areas in space where the gravitational tugs from two relatively massive bodies -- such as Neptune and the sun -- balance out. This allows smaller bodies, like asteroids, to remain stable and fixed in synch with the planet's orbit, as they orbit the sun... Trojan asteroids have previously been found in some of the stable points near Neptune and Jupiter, but this is the first discovery of a Trojan...