![]() Artist's conception of Lucy spacecraft flying past the Trojan asteroid 617 Patroclus and its binary companion Menoetius | |
Names | Discovery Mission 13 |
---|---|
Mission type | Multiple-flyby of asteroids |
Operator | NASA Goddard · SwRI |
COSPAR ID | 2021-093A |
SATCAT no. | 49328 |
Website | lucy |
Mission duration | 12 years (planned) 2 years, 10 months and 19 days (in progress) |
Spacecraft properties | |
Manufacturer | Lockheed Martin |
Launch mass | 1,550 kg (3,420 lb)[1] |
Dry mass | 821 kg (1,810 lb) |
Dimensions | 13 m (43 ft) in long [2] Each solar panel: 7.3 m (24 ft) in diameter |
Power | 504 watts (furthest encounter) |
Start of mission | |
Launch date | 16 October 2021, 09:34 UTC[1][3] |
Rocket | Atlas V 401 (AV-096) |
Launch site | Cape Canaveral SLC-41 |
Contractor | United Launch Alliance |
Instruments | |
High-resolution visible imager (L'LORRI) Optical and near-infrared imaging spectrometer (L'Ralph) Thermal infrared spectrometer (L'TES) | |
![]() Lucy mission patch |
Lucy is a NASA space probe on a twelve-year journey to eight different asteroids. It is slated to visit two main belt asteroids as well as six Jupiter trojans – asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit around the Sun, orbiting either ahead of or behind the planet.[4][5] All target encounters will be flyby encounters.[6] The Lucy spacecraft is the centerpiece of a US$981 million mission.[7] It was launched on 16 October 2021.
On 4 January 2017, Lucy was chosen, along with the Psyche mission, as NASA's Discovery Program missions 13 and 14 respectively.[6][8]
The mission is named after the Lucy hominin fossils, because study of the 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.[9] The hominid was named after the 1967 Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".[10] The spacecraft carries a disc made of lab-grown diamonds for its L'TES instrument.[11]