NASA will not be making any further attempts to fix the solar array of its Lucy spacecraft, at least for now - but the mission should still work as planned.
NASA has announced it will not be making any further attempts to latch the solar array of its Lucy spacecraft, at least for now. Launched in October 2021 on a mission to visit the Trojan asteroids in the orbit of Jupiter, Lucy had problems deploying one of its two circular arrays, and various attempts to address the issue over the past year have not managed to fix the problem entirely. However, NASA says that the spacecraft should be able to operate on its mission as planned.
However, the team had to pause its attempts to further deploy the array when it detected a slight vibration between the array and the rest of the spacecraft that had them concerned. Now, NASA has decided that further efforts to deploy the array are unlikely to do any good, so it won’t be making any more attempts for now.
The array has been generating enough solar power for the mission even in its unlatched state, but one concern was that vibrations from the spacecraft firing its thrusters could cause damage to the array. So when Lucy made a flyby of Earth last year the team chose to adjust its course to lessen the atmospheric drag it experienced.
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