In the 1970s four spacecraft began their one-way trips out of our Solar
System. As the first human-built objects to ever venture into interstellar
space, NASA chose to place plaques on Pioneer 10 and 11 and golden records
on Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft to serve as messages to any alien spacefarers
that may someday encounter these spacecraft. Continuing this legacy, NASA’s
Lucy spacecraft will carry a similar plaque. However, because Lucy will not
be venturing outside of our Solar System, Lucy’s plaque is a time-capsule
featuring messages to our descendants.
As the first-ever mission to the Trojan asteroids, Lucy will survey this
enigmatic population of small bodies that orbit the Sun beyond the main
asteroid belt — trapped by Jupiter and the Sun so that they have led and
followed Jupiter in its orbit. As these never before explored asteroids are
in many ways “fossils” from the formation and evolution of the planets, the
Lucy spacecraft is named in honor of the fossilized human ancestor
discovered the year after Pioneer 11 began its journey out of the Solar
System. Lucy’s name was inspired by the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds.”
After Lucy finishes visiting a record number of asteroids for a single
mission in 2033 (8 asteroids on 6 independent orbits around the Sun) the
Lucy spacecraft will continue to travel between the Trojan asteroids and the
orbit of the Earth for at least hundreds of thousands, if not millions of
years. It is easy to imagine that someday in the distant future our
descendants will find Lucy floating among the planets. Therefore, the Lucy
team chose to put a time-capsule aboard the Lucy spacecraft in the form of a
plaque, messages this time not for unknown aliens, but for those that will
come after us. The plaque was installed on the spacecraft in a ceremony at
Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, on July 9, 2021.
This time-capsule contains messages from prominent members of our society;
individuals who have asked us to contemplate the state of the human
condition as well as our place in the universe. These thoughtful leaders
were asked to provide words of advice, words of wisdom, words of joy, and
words of inspiration to those who may read this plaque in the distant
future. These messages were solicited from Nobel Laureates in Literature,
United States Poet Laureates, and other inspirational figures including the
members of the band that indirectly inspired the Lucy mission’s name.
To date this time-capsule, the plaque also includes a depiction of the Solar
System on the day of Lucy’s anticipated launch of October 16, 2021. The
original trajectory of the Lucy spacecraft, traveling between the Trojan
swarms and the Earth’s orbit, is shown as well.
NASA places this plaque with the hope that space exploration continues and
someday astro-archeologists may travel among the planets and retrieve this
spacecraft as an artifact of the early days when humanity took its first
steps to explore our Solar System.
Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado is the principal
investigator institution. 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 is
building 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 agency’s Science Mission Directorate in
Washington, D.C.
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Space & Astrophysics