The asteroid-investigating spacecraft is still generating power as it heads towards Jupiter
Lucy, the NASA spacecraft that is bound for the two groups of Trojan asteroids on the same solar orbit as Jupiter, has yet to fully open its solar arrays. The spacecraft launched on 16 October at 09:34 UT and reached Earth orbit so precisely that no subsequent manoeuvres were needed. But when the solar panels deployed, 30 minutes later, only one of them unfurled completely and latched into place, while the other remained partially folded.
Even with one ‘lame wing’, Lucy is generating almost as much power as would be expected if both had deployed successfully. As such, the spacecraft is able to run all the on-board systems needed to begin its journey to the gas giant. As Lucy gets further away from the Sun, however, the solar panels will become less productive, and so NASA is keen to fix the issue.
At the time of writing, NASA was still assessing the situation. As there is no way to visually inspect the spacecraft, the team has to move Lucy into different positions in respect to the Sun and measure how much electrical current the solar panels generate. By doing this they can deduce how far the array deployed before becoming stuck, helping them to understand what went wrong and how they might remedy it.
Lucy is currently flying towards the Trojan asteroids, which are leftover remnants from when the Solar System formed. Over 12 years, the spacecraft will investigate one main-belt asteroid and seven Trojan asteroids, four in the leading ‘Greek camp’ and three in the trailing ‘Trojan swarm’.
Comment by Chris Lintott
NASA’s Mission Control now has plenty of time to work out what’s wrong with the Lucy mission’s recalcitrant solar panels – which have a collecting area of 51m 2 , but even if the probe has to make do with what it has, the fact it is now on its way to the Trojan asteroids should make it a success.
Almost every spacecraft you can think of has had its share of trouble. Galileo had to function without the high gain antenna designed to transmit most of its data back to Earth, and Juno has remained in its parking orbit due to worries about its engines. Spirit kept rebooting its memory when it first landed on Mars, and even the Huygens probe nearly missed out on sending data back from Saturn’s moon Titan, due to an error corrected in the nick of time.
All of these glitches are now long forgotten, lost among the wonderful science produced by these plucky spacecraft. I’m sure Lucy will be the same.
Chris Lintott co-presents The Sky at Night