NASA's first spacecraft to explore the Trojan asteroids arrived Friday, July
30, at the agency's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. It is now in a
cleanroom at nearby Astrotech, ready to begin final preparations for its
October launch.
The mission has a 23-day launch period beginning on October 16. Lucy will
undergo final testing and fueling prior to being moved to its launch pad at
Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
"The coronavirus pandemic required us to re-engineer the way we conducted
assembly, integration, and testing," said Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, Lucy
project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Maryland. "When I think about where the project was a year ago and the
challenges we faced, I couldn't be prouder of the entire team. The fact that
the spacecraft is safely at KSC is a testament to the sacrifice and
dedication shown by every member of the team and their families."
The Lucy mission is the first space mission to explore a diverse population
of small bodies known as the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. These small bodies
are remnants of our early solar system, now trapped in stable orbits
associated with the giant planet Jupiter, forming two "swarms" that lead in
front of and trail behind Jupiter in its path around the Sun. These orbits
are clustered around stable points of gravitational equilibrium known as
Lagrange Points.
Over its twelve-year primary mission, Lucy will explore a record-breaking
number of asteroids, flying by one main belt asteroid and seven Trojan
asteroids. Lucy also incorporates three Earth-gravity assists to reach the
Trojan swarms and accomplish these targeted encounters.
The spacecraft was transported from Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora,
Colorado, aboard a U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo plane. Lockheed Martin Space
designed and built the spacecraft in its Littleton, Colorado, facility.
"It takes a lot of coordination and careful planning to get this spacecraft
to its launch site, and I'm very proud of the team who worked so tirelessly
through a global pandemic to get us to this moment," said Rich Lipe,
Lockheed Martin Lucy program manager.
Over the weekend, the team transferred the spacecraft from its shipping
container into the Astrotech cleanroom and performed post-ship inspections,
confirming that Lucy arrived in good condition. The spacecraft is now ready
to begin its final round of testing and pre-launch checks, which include
software tests, instrument and powered functional tests, propulsion
propellent load tests, telecommunication tests, and spacecraft self-tests.
"It is hard to believe that we are finally here after over seven years of
hard work," says Hal Levison, Lucy's principal investigator from Southwest
Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "We would not have made it without
an extremely talented and dedicated team. It's now time to get Lucy into the
sky so that it can deliver its revolutionary science about the origin of our
planetary system."
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Space & Astrophysics