NASA's Lucy to probe Trojan Jupiter asteroids

NASA is poised to send its first spacecraft to study Jupiter's Trojan asteroids to glean new insights into the solar system's formation 4.5 billion years ago, the space agency said on Tuesday.

The probe, called Lucy after an ancient fossil that provided insights into the evolution of human species, will launch on October 16 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Its mission is to investigate the group of rocky bodies circling the Sun in two swarms, one preceding Jupiter in its orbital path and the other trailing behind it.

After receiving boosts from Earth's gravity, Lucy will embark on a 12-year journey to eight different asteroids – one in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter and then seven Trojans.

"Despite the fact that they really are in a very small region of space, they're very physically different from one another," Hal Levison, the mission's principal scientist told reporters, about the Trojan asteroids, which number more than 7,000.

"For example, they have very different colors, some are grey, some are red," he added, with the differences indicating how far away from the Sun they might have formed before assuming their present trajectory.