NASA's Lucy Mission

by Nandini Mathur

Where did our planet come from? What is our solar system and how was it created? Even though it isn’t possible to travel 4.54 billion years into the past, scientists have set out on a journey to explore something that might carry these memories of our planet’s creation with it; The Trojan Asteroids.

The Trojan asteroids are believed to be a “time capsule” from the planetary evolution period, the earliest days of the formation of planets as we know them. They exist in orbits around the planet Jupiter. Due to their position, the gravities of Jupiter and the sun balancing each other out allows the orbits to be stable and exist for billions of years.

The Trojans are considered to be the earliest remains of the same matter that has built the giant outer planets, i.e. Neptune, Saturn, Uranus and of course, Jupiter. Thousands of Trojan asteroids have been discovered, and it is said that many of them were created at separate points from where they stand today.

These asteroids exist in binary systems and families, i.e. distinct pairs and groups, and many orbit at varying degrees from Jupiter, constantly moving on their tracks and altering their distance from the planet.

“The Lucy Mission” is an ode to “Lucy,” the name given to a fossilized hominid skeleton that gave scientists in the 70s’ a major insight into the evolution of humanity.

The scientists for the Lucy Mission hope the same effect can occur and, in true Lucy fashion, give us an insight into the evolution of our planetary system, with the asteroids serving as the first fossils.

The Lucy Mission will be the first of its kind. It will explore these asteroids for answers to the unclear creation of the planets, and maybe even life.

This probe will have the most complex 12-year space mission ever pulled off. It has set out to explore seven Trojans, with an additional asteroid from the main asteroid belt of our system.

In the seven Trojans, four will be binary systems, consisting of two asteroids together. It will be giving us a look into two clusters of the Trojans, and of the C-, P- and D- types of bodies. It is also a solar-powered vehicle that will, ironically yet remarkably, be traveling the furthest from the sun than any other solar-powered device ever has.

Year by year, the different asteroids to be explored by Lucy will include Queta, Rybates and Polymele in the fall of 2027. Leucus and Orus will be explored in April and November of 2028.

The Probe will take three gravity assists from Earth, returning to earth every few years, in 2022, then in 2024, and finally in 2031, after which it will go on its final expedition to the binary asteroids Patroclus and Menoetius. It will also be exploring Donaldjhonson, an asteroid in the main asteroid belt, in April 2025. The exploration of these various asteroids, their relative ages and the study of their surfaces and materials, will make room for indepth research into the origins of our planets and solar systems.

On October 16th 2021, The Lucy Mission was set into motion with the launch of the probe at Kennedy Space Centre, ready to help us unpack a small part of our vast cosmic universe with its future discoveries.