We're excited to announce two
missions of Discovery.
These missions will help
us learn about the infancy
of our solar system: a
period just ten million
years after the birth of our sun.
The first mission
is called Lucy.
Lucy will visit six
diverse bodies known as
Trojans.
These Trojans orbit the
sun in swarms in front of
and behind Jupiter, trapped by Jupiter's gravity.
We know very little
about these objects.
They may be captured
asteroids, comets, or even
Kuiper Belt objects.
The second mission
is called Psyche.
Psyche will take us to
a very large and rare
asteroid made of metal!
16 Psyche is the
asteroid. It is made of
metallic iron and nickel, much like the Earth's core.
Scientists believe that
Psyche may be exposed core
of a planet that was
once the size of Mars
but it lost its outer
rocky layers due to a
series of violent
collisions.
Lucy launches in 2021
and Psyche in 2023.
Come along for the ride
and follow these and other
planetary missions
on nasa.gov.
