NASA's Lucy mission is scheduled to launch on Saturday, 2021-10-16 at 09:34 UTC. Its planned twelve-year mission will use multiple Earth gravity assists to fling it on a path through both the leading and trailing Trojan regions of Jupiter, where it will encounter seven asteroids, including some believed to date from early in the formation of the solar system. Lucy will also fly by a small main belt asteroid on its outbound trajectory. Here is a live Webcast of the launch.
After a successful launch, Lucy has separated from the Centaur upper stage, unfurled the large solar arrays, and established communications with the ground. She’s on her (circuitous) way to the Trojan asteroids.
Here is Lucy’s trajectory in the rotating reference frame of Jupiter’s orbit. (This is a large [14 Mb] animated GIF which cannot be imported into Discourse, so I’m linking to it.)
On 2023-11-01, Lucy will fly by the main belt asteroid 152830 Dinkinesh (formerly 1999 VD57) a 760 metre stony asteroid that orbits outside the orbit of Mars. The fly-by will allow testing Lucy’s imaging and close approach navigation before its arrival in Jupiter’s Trojan asteroid region in 2027. This will be the smallest main belt asteroid to be visited by a spacecraft.
“Dinkinesh” is the Ethiopian name for the Lucy fossil, and was assigned to the target asteroid in 2023-02-06 after its selection for the fly-by.
