NASA launches Lucy probe to explore Jupiter asteroids

Washington (AFP) – NASA launched a spacecraft called Lucy on a 12-year mission to explore Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids for the first time on Saturday, gathering new insights into the solar system’s formation. The Atlas V rocket responsible for propelling the probe took off at 5:34 am local time (0934 GMT) from Cape Canaveral. Named after an ancient fossil of a pre-human ancestor, Lucy will become the first solar-powered spacecraft to venture so far from the Sun, and will observe more asteroids than any probe before it — eight in all. Lucy will also make three Earth flybys for gravity assists, m…

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