NASA made a great progress after troubleshooting the solar array issues on its asteroid spacecraft, Lucy.
From May 6 to June 16, the agency made multi-stage efforts to deploy the spacecraft's unlatched solar array.
NASA Fixes Lucy Spacecraft Solar Array Deployment
NASA announced that its effort in dealing with Lucy's solar array had made significant progress after the team got the array to between 353° and 357° open.
For months, the engineers have been troubleshooting the solar array issue. The agency just announced that it made a significant progress in resolving the problem, which occurred in October 2021 after the spacecraft's launch. On June 21, NASA noted that Lucy had successfully finished a trajectory correction maneuver.
"The array is under substantially more tension, giving it significantly more stabilization. The mission team is increasingly confident the solar array will successfully meet the mission's needs in its current tensioned and stabilized state," NASA said.
NASA must now pause its effort to assist the asteroid spacecraft because Lucy is going into a location where it cannot easily receive commands. According to NASA officials, the spacecraft won't be able to interact with the Earth via its high-gain antenna for several months due to thermal constraints caused by the relative positions of the Earth, sun, and spacecraft.
The officials said that the engineers could stay in contact with the asteroid spacecraft through a low-gain antenna. However, it could only process fewer data. The agency added that the full communications should resume in October.
If deemed necessary, NASA may try to further deploy the difficult solar array when the spacecraft remains nearby.
NASA's Lucy Journey to Trojan Asteroids
To gain speed for its journey to nine Trojan asteroids orbiting the sun at the same distance as Jupiter, Lucy will pass by Earth. At the same time, the spacecraft will come out of the partial blackout.
The spacecraft contains plenty of power when it's close to the Earth. But, the spacecraft's array needs to be nearly fully deployed to generate adequate electricity. Jupiter's sunlight is considerably fainter than the Earth's sunlight. The giant is almost five times further from the sun than Earth, with an average orbital distance of 484 million miles.
Lucy is the first aircraft to visit Jupiter's Trojan asteroid.
ALSO READ: NASA Lucy Spacecraft Glitch: Mission Faces Major Solar Array Issue; Will Engineers Fix This Snag?
NASA's Lucy Failed Deployment
NASA's asteroid spacecraft Lucy was launched in October 2021. Unfortunately, one of its fan-like solar arrays failed to latch after deployment. The agency decided to create steps to complete the spacecraft's deployment.
The first step of the two-step plan happened on May 9. Its time was limited as it was not meant to launch the solar array but confirm the team's ground testing after capturing the performance of the flight system.
The team has several more chances to repeat the deployment commands. Although there is no guarantee that future attempts will launch the array, there is a strong indication that the process is putting the array under more tension, further stabilizing it.
The asteroid aircraft is expected to finish its journey in the 12th year after its launch. At this point, Lucy will study one main-belt asteroid and seven Trojan asteroids that circle the sun alongside Jupiter. If this element becomes successful, it will be the first mission to explore many different asteroids.
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