Lucy: a journey to the fossils of our Solar System

Lucy: a journey to the fossils of our Solar System

Video March 08, 2022
© Haus der Astronomie

Lucy is the first space mission to the Trojans: asteroids that orbit our Sun on the same orbit as Jupiter. On 16 October 2021, Lucy launched from Cape Canaveral on a twelve-year journey to visit 6 of these Trojans. The mission is named after our common ancestor Lucy, whose fossil shows us what our ancestors looked like 3 million years ago. Likewise, the Trojans are thought to be remnants of the early solar system, planetary bricks captured by Jupiter and therefore unchanged over the last 4.5 billion years.

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