Tour

The Lucy mission will travel to eight Trojan asteroids and three main belt asteroids. No other space mission is history has been launched to as many different destinations in independent orbits around the Sun! The Lucy mission will be traveling to a record-breaking number of targets that independently orbit the Sun. Below there is a brief introduction to each target, including an artist’s conception of the target inspired by Earth-based observations. We won’t know what they really look like until Lucy gets there!

Lucy launched in October 2021. Before its second Earth gravity assist, Lucy will travel through the inner edge of the main asteroid belt and fly by its first asteroid in November 2023. It will fly by (152830) Dinkinesh and its satellite.

Lucy trajectory showing greek and trojan camps
Lucy trajectory showing the Greek and Trojan camps at the L4 and L5 Lagrange points, respectively.

Later, Lucy will fly by (52246) Donaldjohanson, an asteroid named after one of the co-discoverers of the Lucy fossil.

The Lucy spacecraft will continue outwards in to the leading swarm of Trojan asteroids, the L4 Trojan swarm. This is also known as the “Greek camp” of Trojan asteroids as most of the asteroids in this swarm (other than the Trojan “spy” Hektor) are named after Greek heroes around the time of the Trojan war.

Lucy will fly by four of these "Greek" Trojans: (3548) Eurybates and its satellite Queta in August 2027, (15094) Polymele and its yet unnamed satellite in September 2027, (11351) Leucus in April 2028, and (21900) Orus in November 2028.

The spacecraft’s orbit will then take Lucy back towards the orbit of Earth. When its orbit takes the spacecraft outwards again, Jupiter and the Trojan swarms will have rotated enough so that the spacecraft will pass through the trailing L5 swarm of Trojans Asteroids, otherwise known as the “Trojan camp.”

Here, on March of 2033, Lucy will fly past the Greek “spies” in the Trojan camp, (617) Patroclus and its binary companion Menoetius . The flyby of this binary asteroid pair will be the grand finale of the mission. However, Lucy will be on a stable orbit and can continue flying through the Trojan swarms for many years to come.

The trajectory of the Lucy spacecraft. The spacecraft and its path are in red, the Earth and its orbit are in blue, and Jupiter and its orbit are in orange. Each target is named as the spacecraft flys by and are outlined with a white circle.
The trajectory can also be looked at in a frame rotating with Jupiter. The spacecraft and its path are in red, the Earth is in blue, and Jupiter is in orange. In this view, the planets' orbits are represented by bands that indicate the minimum and maximum distances between the planet and the Sun (also known as the perihelia and aphelia).

All flybys can be seen in the frame rotating with Jupiter:

The trajectory of the Lucy Mission in the frame of Jupiter
Updated: Feb 24, 2025