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Lucy in the sky with Trojan asteroids

Nature Astronomy volume 5, page 1178 (2021)Cite this article

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Lucy mission’s bold objective is to study a class of distant asteroids — the Trojan asteroids — never explored before by spacecraft, explain Deputy Project Scientist Simone Marchi and Deputy Principal Investigator Cathy Olkin.

Spacecraft have roamed far and wide across the Solar System, passing by numerous primitive small bodies from the orbit of the Earth to beyond the orbit of Pluto. There are two large populations of stable asteroids in the Solar System — estimated to contain more than a million objects larger than 1 km in diameter — that have yet to be explored at close range, the so-called Trojan asteroids, which lead and trail Jupiter by 60° along its orbit. The exploration of the Trojan asteroids has been identified as a high scientific priority for NASA, and the Lucy mission will accomplish the first reconnaissance of these distant bodies. There is plenty of motivation for this.

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Fig. 1: Lucy in the sky with Trojan asteroids.

SwRI/Marchi

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  1. Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO, USA

    Simone Marchi & Catherine B. Olkin

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  1. Simone Marchi
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  2. Catherine B. Olkin
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Correspondence to Simone Marchi.

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Marchi, S., Olkin, C.B. Lucy in the sky with Trojan asteroids. Nat Astron 5, 1178 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-021-01534-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-021-01534-6

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