November 22, 2024

NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft: Instruments Checkout A-OK, Progress on Solar Array Glitch

By NASA
November 19, 2021

Lucy will check out the Jupiter Trojan asteroids– believed to be “fossils of planet development.” Credit: NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center
NASAs Lucy spacecraft continues to run in cruise mode– the standard mode for its orbit far from Earth.
Checkouts for the Lucy instruments were effectively finished on November 8, and all instruments are working normally. Following checkout conclusion, the instruments were powered off, and the remaining spacecraft subsystem commissioning activities are continuing as arranged.
Lucys Solar Array Anomaly Response Team has actually made progress searching for the cause of the solar ranges incomplete implementation. The group has used an engineering design of the solar range motor and lanyard to duplicate what was observed throughout the preliminary solar variety implementation.