Lucy
2021
A NASA probe on a 12-year journey to eight asteroids - two near-Earth "sentinels" and six Jupiter Trojans - to read the "fossils of planet formation".
Specs
Launched 16 Oct 2021 (Atlas V 541); $981M Discovery Program mission; flyby encounters only. Already flew by Dinkinesh (Nov 2023) and Donaldjohanson (Apr 2025); first main Trojan target Eurybates (L5) in Aug 2027. Carries a disc of lab-grown diamonds for the L'TES instrument.
Why it matters
Named after the Lucy hominin fossils - the Trojans are the 'fossils of planet formation', pristine material from the early Solar System that never got folded into a planet. Studying them tells us how the planets (and the asteroids) formed.