A spacecraft quietly speeding its way through the Solar System has caught its first glimpses of the asteroids it was sent to investigate from a distance of hundreds of thousands of kilometers.
. Of the 11 objects it is scheduled to visit, the probe has already imaged four, providing us with timelapses of the asteroids Eurybates, Polymele, Leucus, and Orus.
Asteroids tend to collect in those two positions of Jupiter's orbital path in what are known as Lagrangian points. These are pockets of gravitational stability created by an interaction between two bodies in an orbital system. In these pockets, the gravitational pulls of the two bodies – in this case, Jupiter and the Sun – balance perfectly with the centripetal force of an object within the Lagrangian to hold it in place.
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