NASA ‘s first mission to trojan asteroids installs its latest scientific instrument

With less than a year to launch, NASA’s Lucy mission’s third and final scientific instrument has been integrated into the spacecraft.

The spacecraft, the first to study Trojan asteroids — a population of small groups that share an orbit with Jupiter — is in the final stages of the orbit. Just five months ago, at the start of the Senate, Test and Launch (ATLO) process, parts of Lucy’s spacecraft were being built across the country. Today, an almost assembled spacecraft sits in the high bay of Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado.

“A little over a year and a half ago, I was thrilled to keep the first small pieces of metal that were going to travel to Trojan asteroids,” said Hal Levison, chief investigator from the Western Research Institute. right. “Now there’s a real spaceship, almost ready to go. It’s unbelievable.”

The last instrument, L’Ralph, was built by NASA’s Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and was found at Lockheed Martin on Jan. 21 and attached to the spacecraft on Jan. 26. L’Ralph is Lucy’s most complex flying instrument, as it is two instruments in one. The Visible Multispectral Image Camera (MVIC), captures visible light color images of the Trojan asteroids. The Revolution will collect the Linear Etalon Image (LEISA), an infrared spectra of the asteroids. These two parts work together to allow Lucy to confirm the decision of the Trojan asteroids and to provide an insight into the early history of our solar system.

L’Ralph’s instrument was significantly delayed due to COVID-19, especially when construction had to be stopped when Goddard was placed under COVID level 4 restrictions in April last year. However, both Goddard’s L’Ralph crew and Lockheed Martin’s ATLO team rose to the challenge and developed a new record that allowed everyone to operate safely while keeping the spacecraft on board. the track for its launch on October 16, 2021 originally planned.

“The L’Ralph team has done an admirable job of delivering a unique instrument,” said Dennis Reuter, L’Ralph’s principal instrumentalist, Goddard. “It would be amazing to do what they did under normal conditions. It’s amazing to do it under the circumstances that have to be dealt with.”

L’Ralph was cast on Lucy’s Instrument Point Platform. This platform gives the spacecraft considerable flexibility during what happened — the instruments can identify Trojan asteroids during the flybys at high speed while the high gain antenna is still on. marking at Earth — as well as making proper and off-plate adjustments -plane marking to get the best data about these accessible items.

Lucy’s other two scientific instruments, L’TES and L’LORRI, were designed and built at Arizona State University, and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, respectively, in addition to the two already mounted Terminal Administration Cameras floor. Now that L’Ralph has been installed, the platform itself will be installed on the spacecraft bus – making Lucy one step closer to getting ready for her 12-day journey. -years to the Trojans.

“Lucy ATLO has been a huge success and L’Ralph’s start-up has been delivered and integrated into the Instrument Platform is a real start to the new year,” said Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, mission project manager from Goddard.

###

Hal Levison and Cathy Olkin of the Southwest Research Institute are the principal investigator and deputy principal investigator of the Lucy Mission. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center provides overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission verification. Lockheed Martin Space is building the spaceship. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASA’s Discovery Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, will lead the Discovery Program for the group’s Science Mission Steering Group in Washington, DC

Nancy Neal Jones

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Katherine Kretke

Southwest Research Institute