Lucy-in-the-Sky Seeks Not Diamonds but Trojans!

Lucy, a 982-million-dollar satellite, set off on a journey scheduled to take a dozen years as she explores objects never before seen up close. Project developers hope to visit at least six (out of the 7,000) Trojan asteroids near Jupiter on a mission that could yield important clues about the birth of all planets in our Solar System. Scientists speculate these asteroids formed when our planets were coalescing. Thus, any data retrieved from the Trojans could have profound implications for better understanding the birth and development of our own planet Earth. Per Audrey Martin (Northern Arizona University), the Trojans “are very mysterious, which makes them really fun.” Per Hal Levison (Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado), “it’d be damn boring if we just saw what we expected.”