Jupiter Trojans have been observed by ground-based telescopes and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer to be 'dark with. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center will manage the project.Įxploration of Jupiter Trojans is one of the high priority goals outlined in the Planetary Science Decadal Survey. Levison of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado is the principal investigator, with Cathy Olkin of Southwest Research Institute as the mission's deputy principal investigator. Three instruments comprise the payload: a high-resolution visible imager, an optical and near-infrared imaging spectrometer, and a thermal infrared spectrometer. The mission may end with the Patroclus–Menoetius flyby, but at that point Lucy will be in a stable, 6-year orbit between the L4 and L5 clouds, and a mission extension will be possible. After these flybys, Lucy will return to Earth in 2031 for another gravity assist toward the ل 5 Trojan cloud (the Trojan camp which trails about 60° behind Jupiter), where it will visit the binary Trojan 617 Patroclus with its satellite Menoetius in 2033. In 2027, it will arrive at the ل 4 Trojan cloud (the Greek camp of asteroids that orbits about 60° ahead of Jupiter), where it will fly by four Trojans, 3548 Eurybates (with its satellite), 15094 Polymele, 11351 Leucus, and 21900 Orus. In 2025, it will fly by the inner main-belt asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson, which was named after the discoverer of the Lucy hominin fossil. Lucy has launched in October 2021 on the 401 variant of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V launch vehicle, after which it will gain two gravity assists from Earth one in 2022, and one in 2024. The Jupiter trojan asteroids are shown in green. The Australopithecus itself was named after the 1967 Beatles song ' Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds', Lucy itself is also carrying a disc made of lab-grown diamonds for her L'TES instrument. The mission is named after the Lucy hominin skeleton, because the study of Trojans could reveal the 'fossils of planet formation': materials that clumped together in the early history of the Solar System to form planets and other bodies. On 4 January 2017, Lucy was chosen, along with the Psyche mission, as NASA's Discovery Program missions 13 and 14 respectively. The Lucy spacecraft is the centerpiece of a US$981 million mission. All target encounters will be fly-by encounters.

Lucy is a NASA space probe that will complete a 12-year journey to eight different asteroids, visiting a main belt asteroid as well as seven Jupiter trojans, asteroids which share Jupiter's orbit around the Sun, orbiting either ahead of or behind the planet. Animation of Lucy's trajectory around Sun

Nasa asteroid watch october 2019