On Saturday, October 16, 2021, at 12:34 Moscow time from a cosmodrome at Cape Canaveral (Florida, USA), a launch of ATLAS V media rocket was held with a LUCY research probe.
The successful start of the ATLAS V carrier missile provided the Liquid Rocket Engine of the RD-180 Development and Production of the Energomash Scientific and Production Association named after Academician V.P. Glushko (part of the state corporation “Roskosmos”) as part of the first stage. Atlas family rockets made 95 successful starts with RD-180 engines.
Lucy Mission is the first space mission to study small bodies, known as asteroids-Trojans of Jupiter. As expected, the probe will reaches the asteroids of Jupiter in April 2025, and completes work in March 2033. This is the first NASA mission to the specified asteroids. In management, it is calculated that it will help to find answers to a number of questions about the formation of the solar system.
Trojan asteroids are small celestial bodies at points where the gravity of the sun and the planet is balanced. They are moving around the sun along the orbit of Jupiter. This planet has about 6 thousand such asteroids, mainly in two large groups. The earth has only one such object.