NASA Says Lucy Is the First Spacecraft to Reach Jupiter's Asteroid Swarm

NASA said on Oct. 28, 2026, that its Lucy spacecraft has entered the region of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, a population of primitive bodies that shares Jupiter's orbit around the Sun. The spacecraft has traveled more than 2.2 billion miles since it launched on Oct. 16, 2021.

The agency says Lucy is the first spacecraft to enter that region, and that scientists expect a close look at the Trojans to help them refine their theories of how the planets formed and how they ended up in the orbits they hold today.

There is no sharp edge to cross. NASA's post on the mission blog says space has no well-defined boundaries, and that mission engineers place Lucy by tracking the spacecraft's radio signals and by imaging the stars around it. The tracking puts Lucy near Jupiter's Lagrange point 4, a gravitational balance point that runs ahead of the planet and holds thousands of asteroids.

Distance is why nothing had been there before. The Trojans sit as far from Jupiter as Jupiter sits from the Sun, about 484 million miles. Several spacecraft have visited Jupiter itself, some using its gravity to throw themselves farther out, but none had a reason to travel that much farther.

Lucy's first close pass, of the asteroid Eurybates, is set for Aug. 11, 2027. The agency says the spacecraft and its instruments are working as expected in the dimmer light and colder temperatures this far from the Sun.

Flybys of Polymele, Leucus and Orus come next, and the paired asteroids Patroclus and Menoetius in March 2033.