Lucy mission

• NASA’s Lucy mission while flying past a small main-belt asteroid called Dinkinesh, found an even smaller “moon” orbiting it.
• The two form a binary asteroid pair.

ABOUT THE MISSION

• Lucy was launched in 2021.
• Lucy is the first space mission to explore a diverse population of small bodies known as the Jupiter Trojan asteroids.
  • These are remnants of our early solar system and are trapped on stable orbits associated with – but not close to – the giant planet Jupiter.
  • Trojan asteroids orbit in two “swarms” that lead and follow Jupiter in its orbit around the Sun.
  • These are thought to be comparable in number to the objects in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
• Over its 12-year mission, Lucy will explore a record-breaking number of asteroids: it will by two (plus a newly discovered satellite) in the belt of asteroids that circle the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and then eight Trojans, which includes five asteroid targets and the satellites of three of those.
• Lucy also will fly by Earth three times to get a push from its gravity, making it the first spacecraft to return to the vicinity of Earth from the outer solar system.

FACT

• The Lucy mission is named after the fossilized skeleton of an early hominin (pre-human ancestor) that was found in Ethiopia in 1974 and named “Lucy”.