NASA launched the Lucy spacecraft on a 12-year mission to explore "Jupiter Trojan asteroids" (so named because they share Jupiter's orbit around the sun) for the first time on Saturday, October 16, to gather new insights into the formation of the system Solar.

As Science Alert reported - in its report published on the same date - the Lucy mission was launched aboard the Atlas V rocket, which is responsible for propelling the probe at 5:34 am local time (09:14). 34 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA.

The 'Lucy' fossil skeleton changed our understanding of human origins and evolution (Jason Coover)

Unconventional mission

The Lucy spacecraft - named after an ancient fossil of pre-human ancestors according to researchers - will become the first solar-powered spacecraft to venture further from the sun to observe more asteroids than any before it (8 probes in total).

Lucy will return to Earth's orbit 3 separate times, using gravity that can catapult her back into the right path, making her the first spacecraft to return to our planet's circumference from the outer solar system.

“Each of these asteroids, each of those samples provides part of the story of the solar system, our story,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate director of the NASA Science Mission, told reporters - in a phone call.

The 1.5-ton Lucy spacecraft has 12-year seed funding (NASA)

Explore 8 asteroids

Lucy's first encounter will be in 2025 with the asteroid "Donaldjohanson" in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, which is named after the discoverer of Lucy's fossil.

Between 2027 and 2033, Lucy will encounter 7 Trojan asteroids: 5 in the swarm at the front of Jupiter, and 2 in the swarm that follows the gas giant, the largest of which is about 95 kilometers in diameter.

Lucy will fly close to the target objects up to 400 kilometers from their surfaces, and will use onboard instruments and its large antenna to investigate their geology, including composition, mass, density and volume.

Lucy leaves Earth aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas rocket (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

The raw material for the formation of planets

The more than 7,000 Jupiter Trojans are believed to be raw materials left over from the formation of the giant planets in our solar system (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), and scientists believe they have vital clues to the formation and physical conditions on the protoplanetary disks. From which all the planets of the solar system, including Earth, were formed.

Asteroids are broadly clustered into two swarms: the "leading swarm" advances Jupiter by a sixth of a turn, and the "later swarm" behind by a sixth of a turn.

"One of the really amazing things about the Trojan asteroids when we started studying them from Earth, is how different they are from each other, especially in their colours," says Hal Levison, the mission's lead scientist.

Some are gray, some are red, with differences indicating how far away from the sun these asteroids might have formed, before taking their current trajectory.