This is the beginning of a 4-billion-mile trip to visit two “Trojan asteroid swarms” that are associated with, but not close to, Jupiter.
These asteroid groups, of which seven individual asteroids will be visited, are thought to be comparable in size to the main Asteroid belt and could hold the keys to revolutionizing “our knowledge of planetary origins and the formation of the Solar System, including the Earth.” To get there, the Lucy probe and launch vehicle will be using three Earth gravity assists in October 2022, December 2024, and December 2030 to slingshot the vehicle towards its targets. This timeline also includes a quick visit with a main asteroid belt target called Donaldjohanson, named after the discoverer of the Lucy fossil. Figuring out how the planets formed in our solar system billions of years ago is one of many questions that still perplexes modern science.
