Lucy’s Solar Powered Journey Continues

August 3, 2022
CreditNASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
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NASA’s Lucy mission is heading to the Jupiter Trojans – two swarms of unexplored asteroids trapped in Jupiter’s orbit. Lucy made a picture-perfect launch on Oct. 16, 2021, but when the spacecraft began to unfurl its solar arrays, it encountered an anomaly.

One of the arrays failed to fully deploy and latch shut, putting the mission at risk. For months, Lucy’s flight operations team worked meticulously to address the issue and put Lucy back on its solar-powered journey to the Jupiter Trojans.