NASA's Lucy spacecraft refuses to fully unfurl solar panel as it races toward Jupiter

NASA’s team handling the Lucy mission is facing major challenges as one of the solar panels, which failed to fully deploy, is still refusing to unfurl completely. Soon after the spacecraft’s launch, which was conducted on October 16 last year, the engineers noticed that one of Lucy’s two solar panels is unfurled between 75% to 95% but assured that this would not hinder the probe’s journey. Now, in June 2022, the mission team is still struggling with the jammed solar panel.

Lucy was launched by NASA last year to study eight Trojan asteroids of Jupiter. Lucy would fly past one of the main belt asteroids and seven Trojan asteroids during the following 12 years, marking it the first single spaceship expedition of NASA to visit so many distinct asteroids. 

Lucy's solar panel still jammed

In the latest mission update, NASA revealed that the engineers attempted to fully spread the panels by using both the primary and backup motor windings to pull them outward. According to NASA, the commands to start the panel-deploying motors were first sent on May 9 and the results of the process were analysed. 

Since the mission team was careful about not overheating the motor, they again sent the commands on May 12 and May 26. During their third attempt, i.e. on May 26, the engineers found that the array was continuing to open; however, it is still not at its 100%.

“The team repeated the deployment command sequence a fourth time on June 2. While the array still did not latch, the data indicates that it continued to further deploy and stiffen throughout the attempt”, the agency said in a statement. 

NASA said that there are a few more opportunities to attempt the deployment of the panels but there is no guarantee that additional attempts will latch the array. This is because the team believes that the repeated process using the motors is putting more tension on the array and is further stabilising it. However, NASA is confident that even if the panels do not latch completely, it will be enough for the spacecraft to continue its journey.

Notably, Lucy completed its trajectory correction manoeuvre on June 7, which was the first in the series of manoeuvres it will execute before its first-ever Earth gravity assist scheduled for October 16 this year.