The Lucy probe has set off in an attempt to learn more about our solar system

A new space mission was launched on Saturday morning, October 16, from Florida, in the United States. NASA’s Lucy probe has set off on a long journey to the outskirts of Jupiter. Like the skeleton of Lucy, discovered in 1974 in Africa that allowed us to learn more about the origin of humans, this space probe will try to teach us more about the origin of our solar system.

Therefore, the direction of asteroid clusters is called “Trojans”. “These are asteroids located at Lagrange points, stable points around Jupiter, which are a kind of asteroid tank,” Eric Lagadec, an astrophysicist at the Côte d’Azur Observatory, explains. These asteroids located more than 700 million km from the sun, You will be transported by a space mission for the first time., Determines.

Lucy did not reach her destination until 2027. Then she could begin to study these objects whose composition, density and shape would allow, for example, to learn more about the evolution of the arrangement of the planets around our Sun.

#LucyMission It will visit 7 Trojan asteroids between 2027 and 2033, plus an additional asteroid in the main belt in 2025. No other space mission in history has been launched to so many different destinations in independent orbits around the Sun! #CountdownToLaunch https://t.co/eNr0SHpYOg

– NASA Launch Services Program (NASA_LSP) October 16, 2021

“Since 1995, we have discovered exoplanets, which orbit other stars, and we realized that the model in which we had to explain the formation of the solar system was not necessarily correct, Eric Lagadec explains. And that the planets as we see them now in the solar system have migrated. That is, their position is not the one in which they were formed.”

Eric Lagadec watched Lucy take off from Senegal, where professional and amateur astronomers were able to observe an asteroid that night the probe will fly in several years, like the blink of an eye.