Atlas V launches Lucy

A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V 401 launch vehicle launched NASA’s Lucy spacecraft to a hyperbolic orbit, from Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on 16 October 2021, at 09:34 UTC (05:34 PDT). According to NASA, “The Lucy mission is the first space mission to explore a diverse population of small bodies known as the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. Over its 12-year primary mission, Lucy will explore a record- breaking number of asteroids, flying by one main belt asteroid and seven Trojan asteroids. Additionally, Lucy will have three Earth flybys for gravity assists, making it the first spacecraft ever to return to the vicinity of Earth from the outer Solar System. The Lucy mission is named after the fossilized skeleton of an early hominin (pre-human ancestor) that was found in Ethiopia in 1974 and named “Lucy” by the team of paleoanthropologists who discovered it. And just as the Lucy fossil provided unique insights into human evolution, the Lucy mission promises t