Lucy (spacecraft)

Lucy
Artist's conception of Lucy spacecraft flying past the Trojan asteroid 617 Patroclus and its binary companion Menoetius
NamesDiscovery Mission 13
Mission typeMultiple-flyby of asteroids
OperatorNASA Goddard · SwRI
COSPAR ID2021-093A Edit this at Wikidata
SATCAT no.49328
Websitelucy.swri.edu
Mission duration12 years (planned)
3 years, 1 month and 8 days (in progress)
Spacecraft properties
ManufacturerLockheed Martin
Launch mass1,550 kg (3,420 lb)[1]
Dry mass821 kg (1,810 lb)
Dimensions13 m (43 ft) in long [2]
Each solar panel: 7.3 m (24 ft) in diameter
Power504 watts (furthest encounter)
Start of mission
Launch date16 October 2021, 09:34 UTC[1][3]
RocketAtlas V 401 (AV-096)
Launch siteCape Canaveral SLC-41
ContractorUnited Launch Alliance
Instruments
High-resolution visible imager (L'LORRI)
Optical and near-infrared imaging spectrometer (L'Ralph)
Thermal infrared spectrometer (L'TES)
A diamond-shaped crest houses artworks of the Lucy fossil at left, the Lucy spacecraft at center, and an artist's impression of a Jupiter trojan. The word "Lucy" is written in a large, bold red font at the top right corner, while the words "First to the Trojans" and "SWRI · NASA · LM" are written in a smaller white font across the bottom edges of the diamond-shaped crest.
Lucy mission patch
← InSight
Psyche →

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]

  1. ^ a b "Lucy". NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive. Archived from the original on 16 October 2021. Retrieved 3 February 2023.
  2. ^ "The Lucy Spacecraft and Payload". Southwest Research Institute. 9 July 2018. Archived from the original on 16 November 2021. Retrieved 7 December 2018.
  3. ^ "U.S. Launch Schedule". NASASpaceflight.com. 16 October 2021. p. 206. Archived from the original on 1 November 2021. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  4. ^ Hille, Karl (21 October 2019). "NASA's Lucy Mission Clears Critical Milestone". NASA. Archived from the original on 22 October 2019. Retrieved 5 December 2020. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  5. ^ "Lucy: The First Mission to the Trojan Asteroids". NASA. 21 April 2017. Archived from the original on 6 December 2020. Retrieved 16 October 2021. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  6. ^ a b Chang, Kenneth (6 January 2017). "A Metal Ball the Size of Massachusetts That NASA Wants to Explore". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 7 January 2017. Retrieved 2 March 2017.
  7. ^ "Watch a video tour of NASA's Lucy asteroid explorer". Spaceflight Now. 6 October 2021. Archived from the original on 6 October 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
  8. ^ Northon, Karen (4 January 2017). "NASA Selects Two Missions to Explore the Early Solar System". NASA. Archived from the original on 5 January 2017. Retrieved 5 January 2017. Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  9. ^ Witze, Alexandra (16 March 2015). "Five Solar System sights NASA should visit". Nature. Archived from the original on 25 November 2020. Retrieved 2 October 2015.
  10. ^ Johanson, Donald C.; Wong, Kate (2010). Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins. Crown Publishing Group. pp. 8–9. ISBN 978-0-307-39640-2.
  11. ^ "NASA's asteroid hunter Lucy soars into the sky with diamonds". Los Angeles Times. 16 October 2021. Archived from the original on 16 October 2021. Retrieved 16 October 2021.