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Lucy was launched from Cape Canaveral SLC-41 on 16 October 2021, at 09:34 UTC [3] on the 401 variant of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V launch vehicle. It gained one gravity assist from Earth a year later on 16 October 2022, [12] and after making a flyby of the asteroid 152830 Dinkinesh in 2023, [13] it will gain another gravity assist from Earth in 2024. [14]
It was discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey at Socorro, New Mexico on 4 November 1999. Dinkinesh, the name borrowed from an Ethiopian word for the Lucy fossil, was the first flyby target of NASA's Lucy mission, which approached 425 km (264 mi) from the asteroid on 1 November 2023. [9]
Date Spacecraft Event Remarks 26 December 2030 Lucy: Third gravity assist at Earth Target altitude 660 km July 2031 Hayabusa2: Arrival at asteroid 1998 KY26 [3] July 2031 JUICE: Flyby of Ganymede: July 2031 JUICE Jupiter orbit insertion July 2032 JUICE Flyby of Europa: 2 March 2033 Lucy: Flyby of binary asteroid 617 Patroclus-Menoetius
NASA launched Lucy on its nearly $1 billion mission two years ago. The spacecraft is named after the 3.2 million-year-old skeletal remains of a human ancestor found in Ethiopia in the 1970s.
Lucy Catalog no. AL 288-1 Common name Lucy Species Australopithecus afarensis Age 3.2 million years Place discovered Afar Depression, Ethiopia Date discovered November 24, 1974 ; 50 years ago (1974-11-24) Discovered by Donald Johanson Maurice Taieb Yves Coppens Tom Gray AL 288-1, commonly known as Lucy or Dinkʼinesh, is a collection of several hundred pieces of fossilized bone comprising 40 ...
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Header of the Discovery Program website (January 2016) [1] Depictions of the Lucy and Psyche missions Asteroid Eros regolith, as viewed by Discovery's NEAR Shoemaker mission The Discovery Program is a series of Solar System exploration missions funded by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through its Planetary Missions Program Office.