NASA is getting ready to launch a new science spacecraft on October 16 to study asteroids near Jupiter. The 1500 kilograms Lucy spacecraft is a NASA space probe that will go to eight different asteroids over the course of a 12-year voyage, including a main belt asteroid and seven Jupiter Trojans asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit around the Sun. The mission takes its name from the fossilized human ancestor called Lucy, whose skeleton provided unique insight into humanity's evolution. Likewise, the Lucy space mission will revolutionize our knowledge of planetary origins in the solar system's formation. Let's discuss this exciting space mission into tale. NASA chose Lucy in January 2017 as part of the Discovery Program, a series of solar system exploration missions focused on a specific scientific goal, rather than serving a general purpose. Lucy is NASA's first spacecraft to explore the Trojan asteroids orbiting the Sun. The Trojans orbit the Sun in two loose groups, with one group leading ahead of Jupiter in its path, the other trailing behind. Clustered around the two Lagrange points equidistant from the Sun and Jupiter, the Trojans are stabilized by the Sun and its most giant planet in a gravitational balancing act. According to NASA, Trojan asteroids are time capsules from the birth of our solar system, and over 7,000 of such have been detected so far. These primitive bodies hold vital clues to deciphering the history of our solar system, and may even tell us about the kinds of organic materials that may have been supplied to the early Earth. Armed with a high-gain antenna for communication with Earth, high-tech cameras and spectrometers, the spacecraft will check out several key features of these asteroids by capturing their physical properties. Lucy will fly by and carry out remote sensing on eight different Trojan asteroids to address four main science objectives. Lucy will study surface geology by mapping the shape, albedo, and crater spatial and size frequency distributions of asteroids. These studies will determine the nature of crustal structure and layering, and determine the relative ages of surface units. Lucy will study the surface color and composition of its targets to assess the distribution of minerals, ices, and organic species. Lucy will also determine the masses and densities of the asteroids, and will study sub-surface composition via excavation by craters, fractures, ejecta blankets, and exposed bedding. Finally, the spacecraft will study satellites or rings that might orbit the targeted Trojan asteroids, because some of the Trojans might even have Saturn-like rings consisting of super small rocks or icy bodies. Scientists will try to answer these and other questions with Lucy by using three main onboard instruments. LaRalph is Lucy's color visible image or an infrared imaging spectrometer that will be used to measure silicates, ices, and organics at the surface. As the photographs LaRalph will take are massive, it also has 256GB of onboard memory, and its images will help us determine the Trojan's surface compositions. LaLauri, or the long-range reconnaissance imager, is Lucy's high spatial resolution visible imager that will produce clear images of the Trojan asteroids, despite the fact that they are extremely dark. From 1000 kilometers away, LaLauri will be able to clearly see craters with a diameter of 70 meters, thus helps us in understanding the surface geology of the Trojan asteroids. The third instrument, LaTess, is a thermal emission spectrometer which will allow the Lucy team to learn much more about the properties of the Trojans, such as their thermal inertia, a measure of how slowly an object heats up or releases heat. LaTess is technically not an imager, though it can take temperature measurements at various points on an asteroid, which can be combined to produce a picture of the surface properties. Additionally, Lucy will be able to use its high-gain antenna to determine the masses of the targets using the Doppler shift of the radio signal. Lucy will also use its terminal tracking camera to take wide field images of the asteroids to better constrain the asteroids' shapes. Lucy will be over 14 meters from tip to tip, but most of that is the huge solar panels needed to power the spacecraft as it flies out to the orbit of Jupiter. All of the instruments and the two meter long high-gain antenna required to communicate with Earth will be located on the much smaller spacecraft body. Lucy was selected in 2017 along with the psyche mission, a planned orbiter mission that will explore the origin of planetary cores by studying the metallic asteroid of the same name. On 18 October 2019, Lucy successfully completed its critical design review, during which the Lucy team members presented the completed mission design, demonstrating that the team has met all the technical challenges of the mission and is ready to begin building hardware. On 28 August 2020, NASA announced that Lucy had passed its key decision pointee, with a green light to assemble and test the spacecraft and its instruments. Assembly, testing, and launch operations began on schedule at Lockheed Martin Space in Colorado, despite many unforeseen challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The first scientific instrument of the spacecraft, LaLaurie, was successfully integrated into the spacecraft on 30 October 2020. The second scientific instrument LaTess was integrated in January 2021, and the third and final scientific instrument LaRalve was integrated onto the spacecraft in February. The spacecraft completed its solar array deployment tests the same month inside a thermal vacuum chamber. Though when folded up, the solar panels are a mere 10 cm thick, once expanded, each solar panel has a diameter of nearly 7.3 meters. The solar arrays will recharge the batteries that will power spacecraft instruments, and according to NASA, it will take a total of 20 minutes for these crucial solar panels to extend after launch. In March, the spacecraft went through a clamp band shock test which simulates the release of Lucy from a launch vehicle and ensures the spacecraft can withstand the shock generated by that event. In July, the spacecraft arrived in a clean room at the Kennedy Space Center to begin final preparations for its launch. On September 18, propulsion engineers finished filling Lucy's fuel tanks with approximately 725 kg of liquid hydrazine and liquid oxygen, which make up 40% of the spacecraft's mass. The spacecraft will use traditional chemical propulsion technology that will be used for precise maneuvers to propel Lucy to its asteroid destinations on schedule. The $981 million Lucy mission is planned to launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Incapsulated in the Atlas V rocket's metallic payload fairing, the spacecraft was placed atop the launch vehicle on October 7. The completed Atlas V and Lucy spacecraft stand 57.3 meters tall and will weigh about 337,000 kg when fully fueled at lift-off. The launch is targeted for October 16 at 934 AMUTC when the three-week interplanetary launch window opens. There will be opportunities for Lucy to depart Earth through November 7. It will be United Launch Alliance's 146th mission and the 89th launch of the Atlas V rocket. During the flight, the first stage burns for four minutes, going from 0 to over 17,700 kilometers per hour to propel Lucy out of Earth's atmosphere. Following staging, the Centaur upper stage will ignite its liquid hydrogen-fed engine for a nine-minute firing that delivers the spacecraft into a preliminary orbit. The payload fairing is jettisoned shortly after the upper stage ignition. After coasting over the equator and Africa for 25 minutes, Centaur restarts its main engine for the Earth-escape burn. This six-minute firing accelerates spacecraft to a velocity of nearly 44,000 km per hour. Lucy will be deployed from the launch vehicle's upper stage almost an hour after lift-off, embarking on a 12-year mission, spanning 6.4 billion km of space to explore eight asteroids. The spacecraft will gain two gravity assists from Earth, one in 2022 and one in 2024 to save propellant. On its way to the Trojan asteroids, the spacecraft will fly by the main belt asteroid Donald Johansson on April 20, 2025. The object is named for the American paleontropologist who co-discovered the fossilized Lucy skeleton. Lucy will visit five more Trojan asteroids over the course of three years. The spacecraft's course then takes back near the Earth for a gravity assist maneuver to reach more Trojans, arriving on 2nd March 2033 to encounter Patropolis and its near-twin binary companion Manotius to complete the primary mission. After finishing visiting a record number of asteroids for a single mission, the spacecraft will continue to travel between the Trojan asteroids and the orbit of the Earth for at least hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of years. It is easy to imagine that someday in the distant future, our descendants will find Lucy floating among the planets. Therefore, the Lucy team chose to put a time capsule aboard the Lucy spacecraft in the form of a plaque, messages this time not for unknown aliens, but for those that will come after us. This time capsule that contains messages from prominent members of our society was installed on the spacecraft in a ceremony at Lockheed Martin on July 9. To date this time capsule, the plaque also includes a depiction of the solar system on the day of Lucy's anticipated launch of October 16. The original trajectory of the Lucy spacecraft, traveling between the Trojan swarms and the Earth's orbit, is shown as well. The unprecedented data that Lucy collects and beams back to Earth will give scientists and researchers a new way to understand the solar system. Do you want to learn about space missions like Lucy? Then don't forget to subscribe to this channel and turn on the notifications to receive the latest video alerts. And as always, thanks for watching!