In October 2021, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched the 12-year expedition ‘Lucy’, its first voyage to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids to study the evolution of the solar system and the formation of giant planets.
*The Lucy spacecraft was launched on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, USA.
*The mission will be powered by solar energy and will run for 12 years and orbit 8 asteroids (7 Trojans, located in two separate clusters, before and after Jupiter in its orbit, and one in the main belt) approximately 6.3 billion kilometers.
*The work is named after Lucy, a 3.2 million-year-old human skeleton from Africa who belongs to the genus Hominins (one of the oldest human relationships).
Trojan:
*The Trojan is a small celestial body (most of which are asteroids) that survived the early days of the solar system. It shares the orbit of a larger planet or large moons.
*Jupiter Trojans Asteroids are clusters of asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun.