The spacecraft spent two years flying near and around the asteroid before collecting rubble from its surface last year.NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft launched from Florida in September 2016 and arrived at the Bennu asteroid in December 2018.Lucy will remain in the stars orbiting the sun with the Trojan asteroids at the end of its mission. The final asteroid encounter will happen in 2033, concluding Lucy's work. This Trojan has a smaller asteroid orbiting it called Queta, allowing Lucy's instruments to study two objects with this encounter. Two years later, Lucy will catch up to the Trojan asteroid Eurybates. This asteroid is Lucy's smallest target at 2-3 miles and will be used to test the spacecraft's instruments before heading to the mission target. In 2025, Lucy will encounter the main-belt asteroid, Donaldjohansen, named after one of the co-discoverers of Lucy's fossils. Using a suite of science instruments on board, the spacecraft will fly by eight asteroids: one from the main asteroid belt and seven of the Trojans. Lucy will travel 4 billion miles over 12 years to complete its mission. The first Earth-gravity assist will happen about one year from launch in October 2022. The space probe will use Earth's gravity twice to sling-shot out into deep space and catch up with the asteroids. The planets literally are aligning to allow us to do this mission.' 8 asteroids, 12 years, 1 spacecraftĪfter launch, Lucy has a multi-year journey to catch up to the Trojans. 'So Lucy itself was designed to visit as many of these things as we could. ' To understand what they're telling us about the history of the solar system, we have to understand that diversity,' Levison said. It's also unclear just how many Trojan asteroids are out there between the two swarms leading and following Jupiter, according to Lucy Principal investigator Hal Levison of the Southwest Research Institute’s branch in Boulder, Colorado.Įach asteroid is unique and offers another piece of the puzzle to how the planets formed. No one knows what the asteroids will look like until Lucy's images come back.Īccording to NASA, with eight object flybys planned for Lucy, no other mission has visited as many destinations before.

The L'LORRI, or Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, will capture a detailed look at asteroid surfaces. Lucy has an instrument that previously flew on NASA's robotic flyby of Pluto, offering some of the most detailed images yet. Lucy has three science instruments that were designed with different objectives.ĭuring each asteroid flyby, Lucy will look at surface geology, color and composition and look for any rings or satellites on Trojan asteroids. The spacecraft body is about the size of a large deep freezer, but it has two huge solar wings that spread out 24-feet each to power the mission. These primitive bodies hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system. 'Thus, they present us with a unique opportunity to better understand planet formation and solar system evolution.

'Trojan asteroids have witnessed first-hand the history of the outer solar system,' NASA Lucy Mission Manager Sherry Jenning said in a NASA interview. Researchers believe these space rocks hold clues about planet formation and possibly how life came to be on Earth. NASA and its research partners have focused on these asteroids because they are billions of years old and have been stuck in the same orbit, likely since creation. This illustration shows the Lucy spacecraft passing one of the Trojan Asteroids near Jupiter.

Ancient space craf