NASA announced that eight participating scientists will join its Lucy mission as part of NASA’s Lucy in the L4 Trojans Participating Scientist Program. Among them is Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Norbert Schorghofer.
Lucy, which launched in October 2021, is exploring Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, which are thought to be ancient remnants of the same planetary debris that formed the outer Solar System’s gas giants. Lucy is currently en route to the L4 Trojan swarm, which leads Jupiter around the Sun.
This is the first selection of Lucy participating scientists, who will become mission science team members for the four major asteroid encounters that the Lucy spacecraft will have in the L4 swarm in 2027 and 2028. They will remain on the team for subsequent scientific analysis until 2030.
“As part of the Lucy team, I will model temperatures and ice retreat on Trojan asteroids to understand the implications of surface observations by Lucy for the subsurface ice,” Schorghofer said. “I previously participated in the Dawn mission to asteroid Ceres. Ceres is an ice-rich body, but almost none of that ice is visible on the surface. This may also be the case for some of the Jovian Trojans, and it will be my job to determine how much ice could be hidden beneath the surface.”
Lucy’s principal investigator, Hal Levison, is based out of the Boulder, Colorado, branch of Southwest Research Institute, headquartered in San Antonio. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built and operates the spacecraft. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASA’s Discovery Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
