The asteroids have sandwiched Jupiter in its orbit, and could tell scientists about the very early stages of the solar system.
—seven of which are Trojans—in order to find out as much as it can about what clues these ancient space rocks might hold about our solar system's origin.The Trojans were first discovered in 1906 by German astrophotographer Max Wolf.
That year, Wolf spotted an asteroid that had an unusual orbit. It seemed to be moving in front of Jupiter, as though it was locked in the planet's orbit around the sun. Several months later one of Wolf's students, August Kopff, realized that as Jupiter was following this asteroid around its own orbit, it was also being trailed by another; Jupiter was caught in a sandwich of asteroids, andYet the phenomenon of asteroids surrounding a planet is not unheard of. In fact, it was predicted mathematically even before the Trojans were discovered—but it hadn't been observed until then..
An asteroid that is caught in this point receives a sort of balancing force from the sun and the planet. This prevents it from wandering off, and will stay put in its Lagrange point. For NASA, this means not having to chase down asteroids that are roaming freely.
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