NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has had a troubled begin to its mission, with a deployment difficulty affecting its solar energy system — however fortuitously, engineers have been capable of tackle the difficulty. Now, NASA has shared extra info on how members of the Lucy workforce labored to troubleshoot and repair the issue from Earth and the craft raced by way of area.
Lucy launched in October 2021, with its two round photo voltaic arrays folded as much as match contained in the rocket fairing. As soon as in area shortly after launch, Lucy was to deploy the 2 arrays to gather the photo voltaic power which might energy the craft on its lengthy journey to the Trojan asteroids, situated within the orbit of Jupiter. One array deployed as anticipated, nevertheless, the opposite didn’t absolutely deploy. The arrays have been imagined to unfurl just like the arms of a clock and latch into place, however one deployed solely partway and didn’t latch.
The excellent news was that the craft was producing sufficient energy to maintain itself even with the array solely partly deployed. Nevertheless, when not latched into place the array was not below pressure which made it flimsy, and there have been issues that the forces of future maneuvering may shake or injury the array. The Lucy workforce, consisting of engineers and scientists from NASA, Lockheed Martian, Northrop Grumman, and the Southwest Analysis Institute (SwRI), set to work to determine what they may do.
“We’ve an extremely gifted workforce, however it was necessary to present them time to determine what occurred and the right way to transfer ahead,” mentioned Hal Levison, Lucy’s principal investigator from SwRI, in a press release. “Happily, the spacecraft was the place it was imagined to be, functioning nominally, and – most significantly – protected. We had time.”
The workforce found that the issue had been brought on by a lanyard, which was tugged by a motor to tug the array into its spherical form. One thing appeared to have snagged the lanyard and prevented the array from absolutely opening. They confronted a selection: Depart the craft because it was, presently wholesome however doubtlessly risking issues sooner or later, or use further pressure from a backup motor to tug extra firmly on the lanyard.
“Every path carried some ingredient of threat to realize the baseline science aims,” mentioned Barry Noakes, Lockheed Martin’s deep area exploration chief engineer. “An enormous a part of our effort was figuring out proactive actions that mitigate threat in both situation.”
Having modeled out the dangers of every choice utilizing take a look at footage and a duplicate of the craft right here on Earth, the workforce determined to aim to repair the difficulty. It took a number of classes of tweaking and tugging on the lanyard by way of Could and June this 12 months, however finally, the array was virtually fully deployed. It nonetheless isn’t latched into place, however it has deployed to between 353 and 357 levels of 360 levels, which is steady sufficient for the craft to carry out its mission.
Lucy now continues its lengthy journey, scheduled to reach on the Trojans in 2027.
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