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Lucy, NASA’s ambitious mission to study trojan asteroids near Jupiter, launched last week from Cape Canaveral, is already experiencing difficulties.
In a blog post, NASA has expressed concerns over the probe’s solar arrays, which are crucial to the mission, and power most of the onboard instruments.
Lucy’s two solar arrays have deployed, and both are producing power and the battery is charging,” according to NASA. “While one of the arrays has latched, indications are that the second array may not be fully latched.”
Lucy’s solar arrays. Credit: NASA
Engineers at mission control are studying telemetry from the probe to try and understand the problem and possibly come up with a solution.
“In the current spacecraft attitude, Lucy can continue to operate with no threat to its health and safety,” the agency added.
Lucy takes an elaborate route to reach its destination – two clouds of trojan asteroids orbiting the sun on either side of Jupiter – bunny hopping several celestial objects on the way (including Earth), over 12 years.
Named after the famous hominid fossil, Lucy is a robotic archaeologist and packs an impressive number of scientific instruments on board, such the Lucy Thermal Emission Spectrometer – an instrument to scan asteroid surfaces for infrared radiation, and the lucy Long Range Reconnaissance Imager – a telescope that can take black-and-white images of asteroid surfaces to reveal features usually masked by darkness, such as craters and ridges.
Lucy’s elaborate path to its destination. Credit: NASA/Southwest Research Institute
Lucy is roughly the side of a small car and weighs less than 1500 kilograms, including fuel. Built by Lockheed Martin for NASA, the mission is estimated to have cost around $981 million. The probe is expected to reach the first of the asteroid clusters by 2036 and will study the Trojan asteroids from up close.
Cover Image: Lockheed Martin
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