Spacecraft
Lucy
A twelve-year tour of the Trojan asteroids that ride ahead of and behind Jupiter in its orbit - leftovers of the outer Solar System, held in place for four billion years. It will visit more asteroids than any spacecraft before it, and is named after the fossil, for the same reason.
- Agency
- NASA
- Launched
- 2021-10-16 - still working
Path
A loop round the Sun that Earth flybys keep stretching, out to the two swarms of asteroids that ride ahead of and behind Jupiter. One pass through each, twelve years of it.
Along the way
- First Earth flyby
- Passed Dinkinesh and found it has a moon of its own
- Second Earth flyby, aimed at the Trojans
- Passed Donaldjohanson in the main belt
Everything the map shows is worked out in your browser from published orbital data - nothing on it is a stored picture of where things were.