The blue dot is Earth, the yellow dot is the sun, the green dot is Jupiter, the red dot is Lucy, the red line is Lucy's path, and the grey dots are asteroids for Lucy to visit! LUCY LAUNCHES THIS SATURDAY!!!! Who'll watch it? More on Lucy!: Lucy is the first mission to visit the Trojan asteroids, a group of remnants from the early solar system locked between Jupiter's gravity and the Sun's gravity so they orbit the sun without changing their position relative to Jupiter. The primary mission is 12 years in length, finishing in 2033. However, an extension may be granted depending on the spacecrafts' health. The spacecraft weighs only 800 kilogrammes dry and is about a tonne and a half fully loaded with fuel. It is named after a hominid fossil that taught us about the evolution of humans. Just as the Lucy fossil provided valuable data about how humans evolved, the Lucy spacecraft will hopefully provide insight into how the solar system formed. The first asteroid Lucy will visit is a small asteroid in the main belt used to test the onboard instruments. It is named Donald Johanssen, a homage to the man who discovered the Lucy fossil. There are several onboard cameras, including an upgraded version of one on the New Horizons mission called RALPH. The one onboard Lucy, LRALPH, actually consists of two instruments. One is the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera, or MVIC. The other instrument is an infrared spectrometer called LEISA, which stands for Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array. The second instrument is called L'LORRI and is also taken from New Horizons. The third instrument is the Thermal Emission Spectrometer, which has previously flown on OSIRIS-REx. If you made it this far, congratulations! Here are some links: Scott Manley on Lucy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbwSSdtWUNE NASA Lucy page: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/lucy/main/index How to watch the launch: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/join-our-virtual-nasa-social-to-experience-the-launch-of-nasa-s-lucymission NASASpaceFlight article: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2021/10/lucy-mission-trajectory/ JHUAPL on instrument L'LORRI: https://www.jhuapl.edu/NewsStory/201105-APL-delivers-Lucy-LORRI-despite-hurdles
