The Lucy spacecraft explores the Trojans on Jupiter

After the successful pre-dawn launch, “Asteroid Hunter” Lucy embarked on a 630 million mile journey.

Lucy will target Jupiter’s Trojans, two groups of asteroids containing thousands – if not millions – of space rocks.

Seven of the still-mysterious space rocks that Lucy will pass are believed to be ancient remnants of planetary formations. This is the first time so far that they have been examined in more detail. Camera-equipped Lucy glides 97 miles.

Are there mountains? Dalar? Grobar? plateaus? Who do you know? “I’m sure we’d be surprised,” said Hal Weaver of Johns Hopkins University, who is in charge of Lucy’s cameras.

gravitational force pool

But the journey there is complicated. Only in 2024 will the spacecraft reach enough gravitational force to target the orbit of Jupiter, the fifth planet from the Sun.

A year later, Lucy is expected to glide past the asteroid DonaldJohansson between Mars and Jupiter, in a warm-up period to test the scientific instruments on board.

Despite their orbits, the Trojans are far from Jupiter and most are far apart. Lucy initially aims for the pioneering Trojan to catch up with the first five asteroids, powered by solar cell wings.

It is a little over eleven miles wide

The spacecraft then retracts back to Earth, aided by gravity again and is then thrown toward the next group of Trojans in the orbit of the gaseous planet.

In 2033, Lucy is expected to outgrow the last two space rocks, believed to be fossils from the formation of the solar system. The largest of the eight asteroids is about 113 kilometers wide.