Baton Rouge Astronomical Society Forum

What’s your favorite metal? Gold, silver, platinum? Use that metal as an adjective in front of “Age” and you may just have the perfect descriptor of this time in Solar System exploration!

Lucy is here! The Lucy mission is headed to seven Trojan asteroids and one main-belt asteroid, and has several years of travel ahead of her. This is the first space mission scheduled to go to as many diverse destinations each with its our unique orbit around the Sun.

Here are the events to be broadcast on NASA-TV (times are Central Daylight)...
Wednesday 13 October, 12pm to 1pm = Pre-Launch Media Briefing
Thursday 14 October, 12pm to 1pm = Science Media Briefing
Thursday 14 October, 2pm to 3pm = Engineering Media Briefing
Saturday 16 October, 3:30am = coverage begins of launch procedure
Saturday 16 October, 4:34am = launch

HRPO is planning a launch party for 3:30am to 5am Saturday morning. Weather permitting, there will be a preview viewing of the winter sky; target objects will include the Andromeda Galaxy, the Perseus Double Cluster, the Pleiades, the Orion Nebula and the Beehive Cluster.

More information:
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/lucy-mission-faq
http://lucy.swri.edu/mission/Overview.html

The Lucy mission is so ambitious, going to space as far as Jupiter orbit! Investigation of the Trojan asteroids is the precious data. With this mission we will be able to get precise data to work on, as the asteroids are one of the main parts of the Solar system, still having its hypotheses and mysteries.
Going to an asteroid itself makes any mission remarkable.

It is great that the Lucy mission is going correct.

Pioneering for the space always has huge potential.
Special missions bring precious data.

And what is great, that with smaller ones we go from breakthroughs to routines. While it took 60 years for satellites become a daily thing.
It takes couple decades or less for landing asteroids to take it's steps forward to become a regular thing. More countries are following US and Japan. UAE is going for it.

Combining the cooperative data from all the missions will make a huge leap for our understanding of the Solar system, hence safety and understanding of the future.

It is not of big surprise, that other countries go after the leaders:
1. What leaders are doing is numerous tests and refinements until the process is ready to go.
2. Any big project involves many countries' cooperation for the effectiveness of testing and production.
What is once a breakthrough becomes a routine sooner or later. Nowadays as soon as possible.