NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is on its way to the Trojan asteroids to learn about the Formation of the solar system, but it isn’t traveling in a straight line from Earth to the orbit of Jupiter. It is instead performing a series slingshot maneuvers that help it along its journey, including one around Earth. A few lucky observers were able this weekend to witness the event. Watch Lucy perform an Earth flyby.Before you go back into space.
Here's @LucyMission during today's Earth gravity assist. Screengrab from observations by @plutoflag.
Continued tracking https://t.co/u9JmKlOCQ3 pic.twitter.com/ZNBWjcYPhB— Raphael Marschall (@SpaceMarschall) October 16, 2022
The spacecraft made its closest approach to Earth at 7 :04 a.m. ET on Sunday, October 16, when it passed within 220 miles of the Earth’s surface. It was originally set to be closer to the Earth, but Lucy’s team decided to keep it a bit farther due to issues with one of its solar panels. Lucy launched two round arrays. One of them was deployed shortly after launch. Not able to fully deployIt did not lock into place. The second array was finally created after months of meticulous tweaking. Almost fully deployed, but still isn’t latched, so it was best to be cautious with the gravitational forces of a flyby.
“In the original plan, Lucy was actually going to pass about 30 miles closer to the Earth,” says Rich Burns, Lucy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in a Statement. “However, when it became clear that we might have to execute this flyby with one of the solar arrays unlatched, we chose to use a bit of our fuel reserves so that the spacecraft passes the Earth at a slightly higher altitude, reducing the disturbance from the atmospheric drag on the spacecraft’s solar arrays.”
Lucy made a journey from Earth to pass by the moon. The spacecraft was able to capture some images which were used for calibration. Lucy will soon be investigating asteroids.
“I’m especially excited by the final few images that Lucy will take of the moon,” said John Spencer, acting deputy project scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, which leads the Lucy mission. “Counting craters to understand the collisional history of the Trojan asteroids is key to the science that Lucy will carry out, and this will be the first opportunity to calibrate Lucy’s ability to detect craters by comparing it to previous observations of the moon by other space missions.”
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