Lucy Spacecraft Is One Step Closer to Trojan Asteroids; Preparations for First Mission Begins in Time for October Launch

The Lucy spacecraft of NASA, which arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is set for launch in October this year with enhancements from the Earth's gravity.

According to Lockheed Martin program manager Rich Lipe, PR Newswire reported that this spacecraft is much more than a single piece of hardware.

He added that the Lucy spacecraft is "a work of art," He is extremely proud of how the team collaborated to build this through a global health crisis. To be here, he said, starting preparations for launch gives him a terrific feeling.

Lockheed Martin designed and built Lucy for NASA. Humankind will be able to see Jupiter's elusive Trojan asteroids close-up because of Lucy. These asteroids are essential for scientists because they are believed to be holding the key to how the solar system and the planets came to be.

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Lucy's Safe Travel

At dawn on Friday, Lucy took the initial steps of what this report describes as its "12-year, four-billion-mile odyssey," to the solar system's so-called "fossils," by embarking a cargo plane in Colorado. More so, moving an almost-a-ton spacecraft 18 months in the making is not a small accomplishment.

After they transformed a shipping container into its own mini cleanroom environment, Lockheed Martin engineers cautiously placed Lucy inside. They loaded it onto a special truck at the company's facility in Littleton, Colorado.

Guarded by its own police escort, the truck drove to Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora, Colorado, where roughly 40 people from NASA, Lockheed Martin, and Southwest Research Institute met Lucy and placed it safely inside the C-17 transport aircraft.

After it touched down at Kennedy Space Center on the Space Shuttle Landing, the spacecraft was moved to Astrotech Space Operations, where it will start preparing for a 23-day launch window, opening on October 23.

Lucy Spacecraft

On its website, NASA said Lucy is set for launch in October this year, and, with enhancements from the gravity of Earth, it will be on a 12-year journey to eight different asteroids, as explained on the space agency's site.

These asteroids include seven Trojans, from which four are members of the "two-for-the-price-of-one" binary system and Main Belt asteroid.

The complex path of the Lucy spacecraft will take it to the two clusters of Trojans and provide the public with the first-ever close-up look of all three main body types in the swarms called C-, P- and D-types.

The P- and D-type Trojans are similar to those discovered in icy bodies' Kuiper Belt that extends outside Neptune's orbit.

On the other hand, the C-Types are mostly found in the outer parts of the asteroids' Main Belt, between planets Jupiter and Mars.

What Comes After Lucy's Pre-Launch?

After Lucy's pre-launch testing, integration of launch vehicle, as well as liftoff on the rocket Atlas V 401, the path lying ahead will see this NASA spacecraft visit eight asteroids, a number this PR Newswire describes as a record-breaking number.

As part of an extremely multifaceted orbital trajectory, Lucy is set to fly, as mentioned, by the Main Belt asteroid and seven Trojan asteroids.

Lucy will use precise instruments to examine these primitive Trojan asteroids' geology, physical properties, surface composition, and physical properties.

A scientific theory hypothesis specified that such objects were scattered during the Earth's outer solar system's creation approximately four billion years ago and captured later in the orbit of Jupiter, undispersed, remaining there for billions of years.

A similar report on the Lucy spacecraft is shown on CBS Denver's YouTube video below: