NASA’s Lucy adds another asteroid to its flyby list

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is adding one more asteroid to its flyby list, bringing its total to 10 and giving scientists a close-up look 17 months sooner than expected.

The spacecraft is on a 12year voyage to visit Trojan asteroids that share Jupiter’s orbit around the sun. These space rocks could unlock secrets to the formation of planets in our solar system.

Lucy launched in October 2021, and scientists expected it would reach the first asteroid, Donaldjohanson, in the main asteroid belt in April 2025. That was to be followed by eight Trojan asteroids, some orbiting ahead of Jupiter and some trailing behind, between August 2027 and March 2033.

Now, Lucy will pass roughly 280 miles from a yet-to-be-named asteroid — currently referred to as (152830) 1999 VD57 — in the main asteroid belt on Nov. 1, 2023. This was added so Lucy’s team could test the spacecraft’s asteroid-tracking navigation system. This new system addresses a problem that had plagued previous flyby missions: It was difficult to determine precisely how far the spacecraft was from the target and which way to point the cameras.

“In the past, most flyby missions have accounted for this uncertainty by taking a lot of images of the region where the asteroid might be, meaning low efficiency and lots of images of blank space,” Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator from San Antoniobased Southwest Research Institute, said in a news release. “Lucy will be the first flyby mission to employ this innovative and complex system to automatically track the asteroid during the encounter. This novel system will allow the team to take many more images of the target.”

The new asteroid was announced just days after NASA said it would stop trying to fully open Lucy’s solar array.

Shortly after liftoff, NASA discovered that one of Lucy’s two solar arrays did not properly unfurl and latch into place. A series of activities in 2022 helped to get the solar array 98 percent open. And although it’s not latched into place, NASA said it is tensioned and strong enough to withstand the mission. It’s currently producing the expected level of power.

NASA no longer will try to fully open the solar array because its attempt in December produced only a small amount of movement. The efforts were more productive when the spacecraft was warmer and closer to the sun.

Lucy will travel roughly 4 billion miles to study its 10 asteroids. Despite sharing Jupiter’s orbit around the sun, these asteroids aren’t actually close to the planet. They’re generally as far away from Jupiter as Jupiter is from the sun.

No other space mission has been launched to as many different destinations in independent orbits around the sun.

Southwest Research Institute An artist’s image shows the Lucy spacecraft approaching one of 10 Trojan asteroids found trailing Jupiter’s orbit around the sun.

NASA/Associated Press A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launches the Lucy spacecraft Oct. 16, 2021, at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.