Southwest Research Institute is the home institution of the principal investigator. 16, on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Lucy is scheduled to launch no earlier than Saturday, Oct. Just as the Lucy fossil provided unique insights into humanity’s evolution, the Lucy mission promises to revolutionize our knowledge of planetary origins and the formation of the solar system. The Lucy mission is named after the fossilized skeleton of an early hominin (pre-human ancestor) discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 and named “Lucy” by the team of paleoanthropologists who discovered it. In addition, Lucy’s path will circle back to Earth three times for gravity assists, making it the first spacecraft ever to travel out to the distance of Jupiter and return to the vicinity of Earth. The spacecraft will fly by one asteroid in the solar system’s main belt, located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, followed by seven Trojans. Over its 12-year primary mission, Lucy will explore a record number of asteroids in separate orbits around the Sun. Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, Lucy Project Manager, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.Rich Lipe, Lockheed Marin Spacecraft Program Manager, Denver, Colorado.Keith Noll, Lucy Project Scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.Hal Levison, Lucy Principal Investigator, Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.Alana Johnson, Senior Communications Specialist, NASA Planetary Science Division.Participants in Tuesday's briefing will include: The live briefing will stream on NASA Television, the agency's website, NASA’s Twitter account and the NASA App. The Trojan asteroids are remnants of the early solar system clustered in two “swarms” leading and following Jupiter in its path around the Sun. 28, to preview the launch of the agency’s first spacecraft to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. NASA will hold a virtual media briefing at 2 p.m. Lucy’s complex path will take it to both clusters of Trojans and give us our first close-up view of all three major types of bodies in the swarms (so-called C-, P- and D-types). Lucy will launch in October 2021 and, with boosts from Earth's gravity, will complete a 12-year journey to seven different asteroids - a Main Belt asteroid and six Trojans, the last two members of a “two-for-the-price-of-one” binary system. Likewise, the Lucy mission will revolutionize our knowledge of planetary origins and the formation of the solar system. The mission takes its name from the fossilized human ancestor (called “Lucy” by her discoverers) whose skeleton provided unique insight into humanity's evolution. Lucy will be the first space mission to study the Trojans. These primitive bodies hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system, and perhaps even the origins of life and organic material on Earth. At these two Lagrange points the bodies are stabilized by the Sun and Jupiter in a gravitational balancing act. The Trojans orbit in two loose groups that orbit the Sun, with one group always ahead of Jupiter in its path, the other always behind. Jupiter's swarms of Trojan asteroids may be remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets, and serve as time capsules from the birth of our Solar System more than 4 billion years ago.