Meet Lucy: NASA's new asteroid-hopping spacecraft
The stars are aligning to let Lucy visit a record-shattering eight asteroids.
BY CHARLIE WOOD | PUBLISHED SEP 29, 2021 4:00 PM
A rocky asteroid takes up the left half of the frame, and a satellite with two large solar panels sits to the right.
This illustration shows the Lucy spacecraft passing one of the Trojan Asteroids near Jupiter.
Southwest Research Institute
Today, NASA engineers will begin packing a freshly built spacecraft, Lucy, into the tip of an Atlas V rocket. When Lucy launches in October, it will attempt a journey unlike any previous mission. Over the course of 12 years, the wandering spacecraft will fly by a whopping eight asteroids, mostly in the vicinity of Jupiter.
The scientists behind the mission think of themselves as cosmic paleontologists, naming the mission after the renowned Lucy skeleton, which revealed a new chapter of human evolutionary history. The Lucy spacecraft will chase down a handful of Trojan asteroids, fossil-like fragments left over from Jupiters formation that the gas giant has harbored in two gravitationally protected zones for the last 4.6 billion years. From Earth, the Trojans show up only as specks of light. The $981 million mission represents NASAs bid to examine the planetary fossils up close.
Whatever Lucy finds will give us vital clues about the origin of our solar system, said Lori Glaze, the director of NASAs Planetary Science Division, at a press conference on Tuesday.
Trojan researchers shoot their shot
More than a dozen spacecraft have journeyed to asteroids before (a few particularly daring machines have even snagged samples), but most previous missions have visited at most two asteroids or comets. Lucy will fly by four times as many targets.
More:
https://www.popsci.com/space/nasa-lucy-spacecraft-upcoming-launch/