A Lucy solar panel on Lucy fails to latch properly after deployment
Engineers at Lockheed Martin (the prime contractor) and Northrop Grumann (which built the panels) are now troubleshooting an issue with one of the solar panels on the asteroid probe Lucy, which failed to latch properly after deployment.
The NASA graphic to the right illustrates this issue, though the graphic might not accurately portray the exact circumstance at Lucy. To get more solar power, Lucy’s panels are larger, and thus were designed to unfurl like a fan rather than the more commonly used accordion design. One panel has not completed that unfurling.
NASA’s announcement tries to minimize the issue but this quote from the link makes it clear that this could be a very big problem.
It’s not yet clear whether the array in question is, in fact, fully deployed but not latched in place or whether it did not reach full deployment and is not generating the same amount of power as its counterpart. It’s also not yet clear whether Lucy can safely fire its maneuvering thrusters with an unlatched array.
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Engineers at Lockheed Martin (the prime contractor) and Northrop Grumann (which built the panels) are now troubleshooting an issue with one of the solar panels on the asteroid probe Lucy, which failed to latch properly after deployment.
The NASA graphic to the right illustrates this issue, though the graphic might not accurately portray the exact circumstance at Lucy. To get more solar power, Lucy’s panels are larger, and thus were designed to unfurl like a fan rather than the more commonly used accordion design. One panel has not completed that unfurling.
NASA’s announcement tries to minimize the issue but this quote from the link makes it clear that this could be a very big problem.
It’s not yet clear whether the array in question is, in fact, fully deployed but not latched in place or whether it did not reach full deployment and is not generating the same amount of power as its counterpart. It’s also not yet clear whether Lucy can safely fire its maneuvering thrusters with an unlatched array.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Didn’t even have to get a million miles away to fail.
Boondoggle does not even begin to properly describe this whole ordeal.
Maybe they can get the x-37 over to latch the damn thing before it floats off into the great unknown…
I had such high hopes for this instrument.
“Maybe they can get the x-37 over to latch the damn thing before it floats off into the great unknown…”
It’s already on an Earth escape trajectory, out beyond lunar orbit, so that seems pretty unlikely…
Still, even if Lucy’s engineers can’t get it to latch, it may not harm the mission if the array is mostly deployed (as suggested in the press release render). Mars Global Surveyor flew its entire mission with an unlatched array (though of a different design), including aerobraking at Mars in the Martian atmosphere using the panels as drag surfaces.
Richard M: That graphic is NOT an attempt to show the present situation. It is a graphic released before launch, that simply illustrates the design of those solar panels.
NASA has presently given us no data on the actual state of the panel. Engineers are probably still trying to figure that out.
Hello Bob,
“That graphic is NOT an attempt to show the present situation.” Absolutely – I did not mean to leave an impression to the contrary. There’s no publicly released information about just exactly how far depoyed that array is. I merely meant that IF the array is deployed as the render created before the mission depicts – and this is a big IF – then even if they *cannot* find a way to latch it, then it’s hard to see how it still wouldn’t be able to achieve something very close to 100% of its intended energy profile, assuming there’s no appreciable risk of the array folding back up.
It’s not a doom scenario yet.
Another thought that occurs to me, though: Goddard opted for circular arrays because they needed to be very large (51 square meters of solar cells) for the mission’s energy requirements out at Jupiter’s orbit, and the fairing size of the Atlas would not permit conventional “accordion” style arrays. This could be less of a worry with certain commercial heavy lift rockets in devolopment, particularly a certain very big one undergoing testing down in Boca Chica.
I hope nothing similar happens to the furling or latching of the JWST.
I don’t understand this fascination with these pseudo-circular solar panels. All they do is add complication and more points of failure, to the most critical system on a space craft, it’s source of power. Furthermore, I have seen video of these panels being tested of, and of all the asinine things the engineers could have done, they made the substrate Flexible. I am an engineer myself and I cannot properly express how upset these design choices make me. These panels reek of this thing being designed in a committee, where people forced through in their favorite pet concepts rather than what would actually be best for the mission. Why? Why didn’t they use traditional, rigid, rectangular panels? Was this a weight or space issue? I can’t see how these panels could be significantly more efficient on either space or weight. Just look at Juno, no problems with it’s panels.
I just… I can’t… I’m going to go have a cup of tea and sooth my offended K.I.S.S. principals with some Kerbal Space Program.