First mission to the Trojan asteroids

The first spacecraft to journey to the Trojan asteroids, which share Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun, is set to lift off on 16 October. NASA’s Lucy mission — named after the iconic hominid fossil — will spend the next 12 years performing gravitational gymnastics to swoop past six of the asteroids. The Trojans probably formed when the planets were just coalescing, so exploring them can reveal more about the birth of the Solar System.