Animation of Lucy's trajectory around Sun
Lucy · Sun · Earth · 52246 Donaldjohanson · 3548 Eurybates · 21900 Orus · 617 Patroclus
Lucy is a planned NASAspace probe that will complete a 12-year journey to seven different asteroids, visiting a main beltasteroid as well as six Jupiter trojans,[4] asteroids which share Jupiter's orbit around the Sun, orbiting either ahead of or behind the planet. All target encounters will be fly-by encounters.[5]
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.[7] The Australopithecus itself was named after the 1967 Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".[8]
An artist's impression of the Lucy spacecraft performing a flyby of a Jupiter trojan.
Each solar panel: 6 m (20 ft) in diameter
Optical and near-infrared imaging spectrometer (L'Ralph)
Thermal infrared spectrometer (L'TES)
NASA patch for Lucy mission
Discovery Program
← InSight
Psyche →
Animation of Lucy's trajectory around Sun
Lucy · Sun · Earth · 52246 Donaldjohanson · 3548 Eurybates · 21900 Orus · 617 Patroclus
Lucy is a planned NASA space probe that will complete a 12-year journey to seven different asteroids, visiting a main belt asteroid as well as six Jupiter trojans,[4] asteroids which share Jupiter's orbit around the Sun, orbiting either ahead of or behind the planet. All target encounters will be fly-by encounters.[5]
On 4 January 2017, Lucy was chosen, along with the Psyche mission, as NASA's Discovery Programmissions 13 and 14 respectively.[5][6]
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.[7] The Australopithecus itself was named after the 1967 Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".[8]