NASA Selects Two Missions to Explore the Early Solar System

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NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is moved to the horizontal position on a rotation stand inside the Astrotech Space Operations Facility in Titusville, Florida, on Sept. 1, 2021. In view, the high gain antenna and solar arrays have been installed on the Lucy spacecraft. Lucy is scheduled to launch no earlier than Saturday, Oct. 16, on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 rocket from Launch Pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. NASA’s Launch Services Program based at Kennedy Space Center is managing the launch. Over its 12-year primary mission, Lucy will explore a record-breaking number of asteroids, flying by one asteroid in the solar system’s main belt and seven Trojan asteroids. Additionally, Lucy’s path will circle back to Earth three times for gravity assists, making it the first spacecraft ever to return to the vicinity of Earth from the outer solar system. Photo credit: NASA/Glenn Benson
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Lucy on her way to SLC-41 to meet Atlas V #ULA #LucyMission #AtlasV

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The #LucyMission spacecraft was placed atop the ULA #AtlasV 401 rocket today in preparation to embark on a voyage to uncharted worlds in the Trojan asteroid swarms that orbit near Jupiter.

Read more in the blog: https://blog.ulalaunch.com/blog/lucy-asteroid-hunter-mounted-to-atlas-v-for-launch
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Launch Readiness Review Completed for NASA’s Lucy Mission

Linda Herridge Posted on October 13, 2021

Teams gathered to hear presentations from key mission managers as part of an in-depth assessment on the launch readiness of the ULA Atlas V 401 rocket, mission operations, support functions, and the readiness of the Lucy team to support the launch.

After the launch director polled each partner, it was determined that Lucy was ready to launch.

Following the LRR, mission managers with NASA and United Launch Alliance (ULA) shared their excitement and answered questions about the agency’s Lucy mission during a prelaunch news conference today at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Updates on the mission were provided by Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, along with Omar Baez, Lucy launch director, NASA’s Launch Services Program (LSP), and John Elbon, chief operating officer, ULA.

“At the heart of Lucy is the science and how it’s going to talk to us about the Trojans,” Zurbuchen said. “I keep thinking about these millions of pieces out there that we haven’t observed and how it’s so important to go observe them because just like so many of these small worlds, these asteroids that tell us about a chapter of our own story, our own history, in this case, the history perhaps 4 billion years ago or so when the outer planets were forming in the solar system.”

”LSP is excited about the launch of Lucy this Saturday,” Baez said. “Our team is ready, and we look forward to a beautiful launch.”

Also participating were Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator, Southwest Research Institute, and Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, Lucy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

“This team has put in so much work in to building a spacecraft that is truly a work of art,” Douglas-Bradshaw said. “It took a team of more than 500 engineers, scientists, and business folks to conceptualize and build the spacecraft that’s going to achieve this amazing science.”

Lucy is scheduled to launch no earlier than 5:34 a.m. EDT Saturday, Oct. 16, on a ULA Atlas V 401 rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy Space Center, America’s premier multi-user spaceport, is managing the launch.

According to Jessica Williams, launch weather officer with the 45th Weather Squadron, Space Launch Delta 45 at the Cape, launch of the Lucy spacecraft is 90 percent “go,” with only a 10 percent chance of violating a weather constraint, the cumulus cloud rule.

During its 12-year primary mission, Lucy will explore a record-breaking number of asteroids, including a flyby of one asteroid in the solar system’s main belt and seven Trojan asteroids near Jupiter. Lucy’s path will circle back to Earth three times for gravity assists, making it the first spacecraft to return to the vicinity of Earth from the outer solar system.

Launch Readiness Review Completed for NASA’s Lucy Mission – Lucy Mission

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NASA, ULA Launch Lucy Mission to ‘Fossils’ of Planet Formation

Linda Herridge Posted on October 16, 2021

NASA’s Lucy mission, the agency’s first to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, launched at 5:34 a.m. EDT Saturday on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Over the next 12 years, Lucy will fly by one main-belt asteroid and seven Trojan asteroids, making it the agency’s first single spacecraft mission in history to explore so many different asteroids. Lucy will investigate these “fossils” of planetary formation up close during its journey.

“Lucy embodies NASA’s enduring quest to push out into the cosmos for the sake of exploration and science, to better understand the universe and our place within it,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “I can’t wait to see what mysteries the mission uncovers!”

About an hour after launch, Lucy separated from the second stage of the ULA Atlas V 401 rocket. Its two massive solar arrays, each nearly 24 feet (7.3 meters) wide, successfully unfurled about 30 minutes later and began charging the spacecraft’s batteries to power its subsystems.

“Today’s launch marks a genuine full-circle moment for me as Lucy was the first mission I approved in 2017, just a few months after joining NASA,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. “A true mission of discovery, Lucy is rich with opportunity to learn more about these mysterious Trojan asteroids and better understand the formation and evolution of the early solar system.”

Lucy sent its first signal to Earth from its own antenna to NASA’s Deep Space Network at 6:40 a.m. EDT. The spacecraft is now traveling at roughly 67,000 mph (108,000 kph) on a trajectory that will orbit the Sun and bring it back toward Earth in October 2022 for a gravity assist.

Named for the fossilized skeleton of one of our earliest known hominin ancestors, the Lucy mission will allow scientists to explore two swarms of Trojan asteroids that share an orbit around the Sun with Jupiter. Scientific evidence indicates that Trojan asteroids are remnants of the material that formed giant planets. Studying them can reveal previously unknown information about their formation and our solar system’s evolution in the same way the fossilized skeleton of Lucy revolutionized our understanding of human evolution.

“We started working on the Lucy mission concept early in 2014, so this launch has been long in the making,” said Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator, based out of the Boulder, Colorado, branch of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), which is headquartered in San Antonio. “It will still be several years before we get to the first Trojan asteroid, but these objects are worth the wait and all the effort because of their immense scientific value. They are like diamonds in the sky.”

Lucy’s Trojan destinations are trapped near Jupiter’s Lagrange points – gravitationally stable locations in space associated with a planet’s orbit where smaller masses can be trapped. One swarm of Trojans is ahead of the gas giant planet, and another is behind it. The asteroids in Jupiter’s Trojan swarms are as far away from Jupiter as they are from the Sun.

The spacecraft’s first Earth gravity assist in 2022 will accelerate and direct Lucy’s trajectory beyond the orbit of Mars. The spacecraft will then swing back toward Earth for another gravity assist in 2024, which will propel Lucy toward the Donaldjohanson asteroid – located within the solar system’s main asteroid belt – in 2025.

Lucy will then journey toward its first Trojan asteroid encounter in the swarm ahead of Jupiter for a 2027 arrival. After completing its first four targeted flybys, the spacecraft will travel back to Earth for a third gravity boost in 2031, which will catapult it to the trailing swarm of Trojans for a 2033 encounter.

“Today we celebrate this incredible milestone and look forward to the new discoveries that Lucy will uncover,” said Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, Lucy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

NASA Goddard provides overall mission management, systems engineering, plus safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASA’s Discovery Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program for the agency.

NASA, ULA Launch Lucy Mission to ‘Fossils’ of Planet Formation – Lucy Mission

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Good to see that Lucy is alive and all is well after getting launched yesterday and that the solar panels have deployed, hope that NASA can find a way to solve the issue with the bad solar panel that is not fully latched.
 
Analysis of electric currents show that the unfurled solar array is between 75% and 95% deployed
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They should have a more precise estimate on that. Indicative of other problems or just an end result of corner cutting?
 
NASA’s LUCY Instruments Being Turned On and Working Normally

Karen Fox Posted on November 5, 2021

The Lucy spacecraft continues to operate in cruise mode – the standard mode for outbound orbit. The team has begun turning on instruments. L’TES and L’Ralph have been powered on and are working normally. Turning on L’LORRI is scheduled for Nov. 8, 2021. Other than the solar array, all subsystems continue to work normally.

The joint Anomaly Response Team has been studying the array using an engineering model. Initial tests indicate that the lanyard that pulls out the solar array may not have completed the process successfully; however, it is still uncertain what caused this condition. The team is conducting more tests to determine if this is indeed the case, and what the root cause might be.

An attempt to characterize the array deployment by attempting to move it would occur no earlier than Nov. 16.

The response team continues its analysis on using the solar array in its current configuration and how that might affect upcoming spacecraft maneuvers.

NASA’s Lucy Instruments Powering On and Working Normally – Lucy Mission

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Flyaway said:
NASA’s LUCY Instruments Being Turned On and Working Normally

Karen Fox Posted on November 5, 2021

The Lucy spacecraft continues to operate in cruise mode – the standard mode for outbound orbit. The team has begun turning on instruments. L’TES and L’Ralph have been powered on and are working normally. Turning on L’LORRI is scheduled for Nov. 8, 2021. Other than the solar array, all subsystems continue to work normally.

The joint Anomaly Response Team has been studying the array using an engineering model. Initial tests indicate that the lanyard that pulls out the solar array may not have completed the process successfully; however, it is still uncertain what caused this condition. The team is conducting more tests to determine if this is indeed the case, and what the root cause might be.

An attempt to characterize the array deployment by attempting to move it would occur no earlier than Nov. 16.

The response team continues its analysis on using the solar array in its current configuration and how that might affect upcoming spacecraft maneuvers.

NASA’s Lucy Instruments Powering On and Working Normally – Lucy Mission

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That is good news that Lucy is getting enough power from the solar panels to power on the instruments despite one not being fully deployed, and that they are working normally.
 
Lucy’s Solar Array Anomaly Response Team has made progress searching for the cause of the solar array’s incomplete deployment. The team has used an engineering model of the solar array motor and lanyard to replicate what was observed during the initial solar array deployment. The test data and findings suggest the lanyard may not have wound on the spool as intended. Testing continues to determine what caused this outcome, and a range of scenarios are possible. The team isn’t planning to attempt to move or further characterize the current state of the solar array deployment before Wednesday, Dec. 1, at the earliest.
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Lucy Instruments Checkout A-OK – Lucy Mission

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NASA Zeroing in on Path Forward for Lucy Solar Array

Karen Fox Posted on December 8, 2021

NASA plans to conduct additional ground tests on an engineering model of the solar array motor and lanyard prior to potentially attempting full deployment of one of the probe’s solar arrays.

A project team completed an assessment Dec. 1 of the ongoing solar array issue, which did not appear to fully deploy as planned after launch in late October. Initial ground tests determined additional motor operations are required to increase the probability of the latching Lucy’s array in place as intended, and the team has recommended additional testing.

Spacecraft operations included discharging and charging the battery while pointed at Earth, moving the spacecraft to point to the Sun, operating the solar array motor with the launch day parameters, moving back to pointing at Earth, and then another battery discharge and recharge. The solar arrays charge the batteries, then the batteries are deliberately discharged, and the solar array circuits are used to recharge the batteries; performing these charging and discharging processes gives the team more information about the solar array circuits.

The team gathered information on two of the 10 gores – the individual solar array panel segments that make up the full array — that previously had no data. NASA now has data on all 10 gores confirming they are open, producing power as expected, and not stuck together.

These activities are helping the agency create a robust plan for attempting to fully deploy the array. Additional ground tests using the engineering model setup will validate a two-motor attempt for full deployment. NASA currently is creating a schedule and the resources needed to support that effort, as well as continuing to study the possibility of leaving the array as is.

NASA Zeroing in on Path Forward for Lucy Solar Array – Lucy Mission

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Update on Lucy's solar arrays: "Initial ground tests determined additional motor operations are required to increase the probability of the latching Lucy’s array in place as intended, and the team has recommended additional testing."
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View: https://twitter.com/nextspaceflight/status/1468842434293420034

”NASA currently is creating a schedule and the resources needed to support that effort, as well as continuing to study the possibility of leaving the array as is."
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Lucy Cruising Outbound; Testing Solar Array Options on Ground

Karen Fox Posted on January 12, 2022

The Lucy spacecraft, launched on Oct. 16, 2021, is now over 30 million miles, or 48 million kilometers, from Earth and continues to operate safely in “outbound cruise” mode. Besides a solar array that didn’t latch after deployment — an issue the mission team is working to resolve— all spacecraft systems are normal. The arrays are producing ample energy, charging the spacecraft’s battery as expected under normal operating conditions.

The current plan supports a latch attempt in the late April timeframe; however, the team is continuing to study the possibility of leaving the array as is. In the meantime, in the lab, they are testing a dual motor solar array deployment using both the primary and backup motor. The testing aims to determine if engaging both motors at the same time applies enough force to complete the deployment and latch the solar array.

In addition to the solar array activity, the team continues to run routine operations on the spacecraft. The next activity is calibrating guidance, navigation & control hardware to ensure pointing accuracy of the spacecraft.

On January 5, Lucy completed a test to look at the dynamics of the spacecraft in order to characterize the solar array.

Lucy Cruising Outbound; Testing Solar Array Options on Ground – Lucy Mission

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NSF said:
The problem with the solar array appears to have been reliably diagnosed: the landyard used to pull the array in place somehow jumped out of its spool "lane" and started to wind around the (obviously much smaller diameter) motor shaft, causing less length of it to be wound. They appear to be able to pull harder to reel back the remaining landyard around the shaft.
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Ars takes a clean room tour of JPL’s asteroid-orbiting Psyche spacecraft

Ars Technica had the opportunity to tour NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California this week, suiting up for a clean room sneak peek at the Psyche spacecraft now nearing completion. This ambitious mission, named after the eponymous asteroid it will explore, is due to launch in August on a Falcon Heavy rocket. Scientists are hopeful that learning more about this unusual asteroid will advance our understanding of planet formation and the earliest days of our solar system.
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After dropping off its sample payload at Earth in 2023 Osiris-Rex is next off to the asteroid Aphophis, arriving in 2029, and will see a change of name to Osiris-APEX.

A NASA mission to return samples from one near Earth asteroid will get an extended mission to visit a second asteroid under a plan approved by the agency April 25.

NASA announced that the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, spacecraft, on its way back to Earth after collecting samples from the asteroid Bennu, will travel to the asteroid Apophis after returning samples in September 2023.

The main spacecraft, after ejecting the sample return container that will land in the Utah desert, will fly by Earth on a trajectory that will bring it to Apophis in 2029, shortly after that asteroid passes just 32,000 kilometers from the Earth. The spacecraft will spend 18 months in the vicinity of Apophis, studying the 350-meter asteroid and coming close enough to use its thrusters to brush away surface rocks and expose subsurface materials.
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spacenews.com

NASA to repurpose OSIRIS-REx for second asteroid encounter

A NASA mission to return samples from one near Earth asteroid will get an extended mission to visit a second asteroid under a plan approved by the agency April 25.
spacenews.com spacenews.com
 
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A team working on NASA’s Psyche spacecraft transitioned it from a vertical to a horizontal test configuration during prelaunch processing inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 9, 2022. The mission is targeting an Aug. 1 launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy. The spacecraft will use solar-electric propulsion to travel approximately 1.5 billion miles to rendezvous with its namesake asteroid in 2026. The Psyche mission is led by Arizona State University. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, is responsible for the mission’s overall management, system engineering, integration and testing, and mission operations. Maxar Technologies in Palo Alto, California, provided the high-power solar electric propulsion spacecraft chassis. NASA’s Launch Services Program (LSP), based at Kennedy, is managing the launch. Photo credit: NASA JPL/Wes Kuykendall
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The psyche mission won’t be going anywhere for the time being due to software issues. It says in the article that the people involved seemed remarkably hesitant to take any option off the table including cancelling the mission.

On Friday, NASA held a press call to announce that its planned mission to the asteroid Psyche, planned for launch this autumn, was on indefinite hold. While the spacecraft is ready and has been delivered to the Kennedy Space Center, there has been a delay in validating the software that will run the mission as it operates in remote areas of the Solar System.

That delay has pushed mission readiness past the point where the launch window closes due to alignment changes in the bodies Psyche will pass on its journey to the asteroid of the same name. NASA is saying that a mission review will evaluate all options ranging from cancellation to simply delaying the mission until the next time a window opens. Problematically, Psyche's launch included a ride-along for a separate asteroid mission called Janus that has its own launch windows, so the review will need to include NASA's entire Discovery Mission program more broadly.
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arstechnica.com

NASA’s Psyche mission launch on hold indefinitely pending reevaluation

The mission’s control software hasn’t been validated, and launch window is closing.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
 
Flyaway said:
The psyche mission won’t be going anywhere for the time being due to software issues. It says in the article that the people involved seemed remarkably hesitant to take any option off the table including cancelling the mission.

On Friday, NASA held a press call to announce that its planned mission to the asteroid Psyche, planned for launch this autumn, was on indefinite hold. While the spacecraft is ready and has been delivered to the Kennedy Space Center, there has been a delay in validating the software that will run the mission as it operates in remote areas of the Solar System.

That delay has pushed mission readiness past the point where the launch window closes due to alignment changes in the bodies Psyche will pass on its journey to the asteroid of the same name. NASA is saying that a mission review will evaluate all options ranging from cancellation to simply delaying the mission until the next time a window opens. Problematically, Psyche's launch included a ride-along for a separate asteroid mission called Janus that has its own launch windows, so the review will need to include NASA's entire Discovery Mission program more broadly.
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arstechnica.com

NASA’s Psyche mission launch on hold indefinitely pending reevaluation

The mission’s control software hasn’t been validated, and launch window is closing.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
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That is bad news about Psyche, and they are even considering cancelling the mission, Madness. :mad:
 

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