Lucy Posters

Sep 11, 2019

You can now print out your own Lucy Posters! Our first posters are artists’ conceptions of Lucy’s grand finale, its flyby of the Patroclus-Menoetius binary.

Most Trojan asteroids are so far away from each other that, if you were standing on one, its nearest neighbor would generally not be visible to the naked eye. Not so if you were on Patroclus! On that asteroid, its binary companion, Menoetius, would dominate the sky. It would appear to be almost 10x bigger than the full moon! The Lucy spacecraft will fly by this binary pair in March 2033.

While the spacecraft is named after a fossil of a human ancestor discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, that Lucy’s name was inspired by the Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” released in 1967. To celebrate the Lucy mission’s connection with the 60s, we have released Lucy posters inspired by the style of some 1960s artists. Which is your favorite? Do you prefer Lucy flying on a psychedelic rainbow? Or is pop art inspired by Andy Warhol more to your taste? Or maybe the comic book / pop art style inspired by Roy Lichtenstein? Or do you like the photo-realistic version the best? Download all four of your Lucy Posters here!