NASA recently launched a special spacecraft called Lucy which will take a 12-year trip to learn more about a group of asteroids known as the Trojans. Scientists believe the asteroids will provide information on the beginning of the solar system.
Asteroids are large rock-like chunks of material that never quite formed into a planet. Most of them are found in the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. One of the asteroids that Lucy will study lies in the asteroid belt.
But the other seven asteroids, known as Trojan asteroids, are in an area of space that hasn’t been visited before. Though the asteroids are very far away from Jupiter, they follow the same path that Jupiter takes around the Sun. Some travel ahead of Jupiter, others behind it.
The Lucy mission will visit more different objects in space than any other space mission. But getting to all of these places won’t be simple. Lucy will have to circle around the Earth three times and travel out to the Trojans twice. The entire trip will be more than four billion miles (6.3 million kilometres) long.
Source: NFK Editors / Internet