They are trapped.
There are two swarms of asteroids that travel around the sun, one in front of Jupiter and one behind. Jupiter and the sun have combined to keep the Trojans out of this loop. The asteroids are not able to leave. We don't have any samples of these distant, still largely mysterious objects because they don't land on Earth.
Planetary scientists are interested in the story of the Trojans. They think these icy rocks are relics of our solar system. The smaller building blocks of planets are called the Trojans. They can tell us how the planets came to be.
"This is the first reconnaissance of the Trojan swarms."
Hal Levison, a planetary scientist who leads the unprecedented mission to investigate the Trojans, told Mashable that they need to understand the small bodies if they want to understand themselves.
The mission, named after the ancient remains of a human skeleton, will visit six different asteroids over the course of 12 years. Levison said that it was the first of the swarms.
An illustration of the six different Trojan asteroids, and one main belt asteoroid, that the Lucy mission will visit Credit: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
You can read more about space rocks and asteroids.
There is a looming question about how primordial chunks of our solar system got trapped. A leading theory is that in the early days of the solar system, the giant planets were closer to the sun than they are today. The smaller, icy objects formed beyond the planets in the outer realm of our solar system.
After the solar system formed, it underwent dramatic change for reasons still being investigated. Levison explained that the large planets became unstable and moved farther from the sun. The opening created by this allowed the outer objects to be propelled near Jupiter.
Levison said that the Trojans got stuck at that point.
They have been circling around Jupiter ever since. They are thought to be remnants of the solar system from billions of years ago. That is what makes them so valuable.
The larger worlds we see today are due to the growth of Planets. The untarnished Trojans are small rocky and icy objects that would have contributed to the creation of planets. They are diverse fossils of planet formation. If we want to know how Earth formed, we have to know what.
The clues are held by the Trojans. We have to get there.
Via Giphy
An animation shows the asteroids around the sun. Credit: NASA.
The Lucy is almost 52 feet wide. bounties of sunlight are needed to power its journey to Jupiter, hundreds of millions of miles away from the sun.
Most of the mission will involve traveling to and around the USC. The craft will swoop in for some close fly-bys of the asteroids. The mission will be looking at the rocks with a number of different cameras for 24 hours. The craft will be moving through space and by objects.
Levison said that they were not going to blink.
"We're not going to be able to blink."
Lucy's powerful cameras, including a spectrometer that can see what the asteroids are composed of, will observe the rocks. They will see how different the Trojans are. Some of the objects found in the far reaches of the solar system are dark red and resemble objects found beyond Neptune.
Levison thinks Lucy beams back. The mission will give scientists unprecedented insight into how our solar system evolved and matured into the eight-planet realm we see today.
Lucy will fly by its first and finalTrojans in 2033 and 2027, respectively, on a tour of the solar system.
Levison said they were going to visit a lot of the things.
The Lucy spacecraft's path (shown in green) to visit the two Trojan asteroid swarms Credit: Southwest Research Institute
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