Lucy
A NASA Discovery mission on a twelve-year tour of the Jupiter Trojans — ancient asteroids trapped at Jupiter's Lagrange points that are fossils of planet formation. It is the first mission to these bodies, with main-belt asteroid flybys along the way.
Imagery
Lucy Rollout and Lift & Mate
The payload fairing containing NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is hoisted up at the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Oct.
2021
NASA/Kennedy · NASA media (public domain)
This is the small-body-missions view of Lucy. See its main mission page for the full profile.
Targets & sample
Mission & science
- Goals
- Survey a diverse set of Jupiter Trojans to probe the raw material of the outer Solar System.
- Engineering milestones
- Flew by the small main-belt asteroid Dinkinesh (2023), discovering its contact-binary moonlet; Trojan encounters begin in 2027.
- Outcome
- In its cruise and early-flyby phase.
- Known limitations
- The Trojan encounters (including Patroclus in 2033) have not yet happened.
Knowledge connections
- Operated byNASA
- Part of programDiscovery Program
- Launched byAtlas V
- Launched fromCape Canaveral Space Force Station
- Target of617 Patroclus
- Member of groupFlyby Mission
- Associated withLaunch & Cruise
- Tracked byDeep Space Network (DSN)
Sources
The primary and reference sources this topic draws on.
- NASANational Aeronautics and Space Administration
Mission data, planetary science, space telescopes, and public-domain imagery.
Most NASA-produced imagery is in the public domain; individual items are checked for usage terms before publication.