See You Later, Lucy!

NASA launched a robotic spacecraft called Lucy on October 16. For 12 years, Lucy will explore asteroids near Jupiter. These space rocks could reveal how planets were formed.

Lucy will fly into a group of asteroids called the Trojan entourage. These asteroids orbit the sun with Jupiter. There could be millions of them. Lucy will get close-up views of seven of them. The biggest of these asteroids is about 70 miles across.

“Are there mountains? Valleys? Pits? Mesas? Who knows? I’m sure we’re going to be surprised,” Hal Weaver says. He’s the NASA scientist in charge of Lucy’s camera. “We can hardly wait to see what . . . images will reveal about these fossils from the formation of the solar system.”