NASA’s Lucy mission successfully launched on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This marks the beginning of a 4-billion mile journey around the Solar System and the first to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. In the next 12 years, Lucy will fly by one main-belt asteroid and seven Trojan asteroids, investigating “fossils” of planetary formation. Read more for two videos, including one of the launch this morning.
The mission was named after the fossilized skeleton of one of our earliest known hominin ancestors, and aims to give scientists more insight on planetary formation as it explores two swarms of Trojan asteroids that share an orbit around the Sun with Jupiter. Current data indicate that these asteroids are remnants of the material that formed giant planets, and the new data could possibly reveal previously unknown information about their origin.
- Bring to life the rocket launch that took humans to the moon with the meter-high (approximately 1: 110 scale) model rocket of the NASA Apollo Saturn V
- The Saturn V rocket kit includes 3 removable rocket stages (first, s-ii second, and s-ivb third) below the launch escape system, command and service...
- After building the Saturn V rocket, you can display the spacecraft horizontally with 3 stands; The Lunar Lander docks with the command and service...
We started working on the Lucy mission concept early in 2014, so this launch has been long in the making. It will still be several years before we get to the first Trojan asteroid, but these objects are worth the wait and all the effort because of their immense scientific value. They are like diamonds in the sky,” said Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator, based out of the Boulder, Colorado.
