NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is on its method to the Trojan asteroids to be taught in regards to the formation of the photo voltaic system, nevertheless it isn’t touring in a straight line from Earth to the orbit of Jupiter. Instead, it’s performing a collection of slingshot maneuvers to assist it on its journey, together with a latest maneuver round Earth. This weekend, a couple of fortunate observers have been capable of see Lucy because it carried out an Earth flyby earlier than heading again out into area.

Here's @LucyMission throughout at present's Earth gravity help. Screengrab from observations made by @plutoflag.
Tracking continues on https://t.co/u9JmKlOCQ3 pic.twitter.com/ZNBWjcYPhB

— Raphael Marschall (@SpaceMarschall) October 16, 2022

The spacecraft got here closest to Earth at 7:04 a.m. ET on Sunday, October 16, when it handed inside 220 miles of the Earth’s floor. Originally, it had been set to come back occasion nearer, however the Lucy workforce selected to maintain a bit extra distance as a consequence of issues that Lucy has had with certainly one of its photo voltaic arrays. Lucy has two spherical arrays, which deployed following launch, however certainly one of them didn’t deploy totally and didn’t latch into place. After months of cautious tweaking, the second array is nearly totally deployed, however nonetheless isn’t latched, so it was finest to be cautious with the gravitational forces of a flyby.

“In the original plan, Lucy was actually going to pass about 30 miles closer to the Earth,” says Rich Burns, Lucy undertaking supervisor at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in a assertion. “However, when it became clear that we might have to execute this flyby with one of the solar arrays unlatched, we chose to use a bit of our fuel reserves so that the spacecraft passes the Earth at a slightly higher altitude, reducing the disturbance from the atmospheric drag on the spacecraft’s solar arrays.”

As Lucy moveda manner from Earth, it additionally handed by the moon. This gave the spacecraft the chance to take some pictures that might be used for calibration, because the moon is a useful stand-in for the asteroids that Lucy will finally examine.

“I’m especially excited by the final few images that Lucy will take of the moon,” stated John Spencer, appearing deputy undertaking scientist on the Southwest Research Institute, which leads the Lucy mission. “Counting craters to understand the collisional history of the Trojan asteroids is key to the science that Lucy will carry out, and this will be the first opportunity to calibrate Lucy’s ability to detect craters by comparing it to previous observations of the moon by other space missions.”

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