NASAs Lucy mission, the agencys first to Jupiters Trojan asteroids, launched at 5:34 a.m. EDT Saturday on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Over the next 12 years, Lucy will fly by one main-belt asteroid and seven Trojan asteroids, making it the agencys first single spacecraft mission in history to explore so many different asteroids. Lucy will investigate these fossils of planetary formation up close during its journey.
Lucy embodies NASAs enduring quest to push out into the cosmos for the sake of exploration and science, to better understand the universe and our place within it, said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. I cant wait to see what mysteries the mission uncovers!
About an hour after launch, Lucy separated from the second stage of the ULA Atlas V 401 rocket. Its two massive solar arrays, each nearly 24 feet (7.3 meters) wide, successfully unfurled about 30 minutes later and began charging the spacecrafts batteries to power its subsystems.
