NASA's Lucy spacecraft swings by Earth on its way to Trojans | Digital Trends

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is on its way to the Trojan asteroids to learn about the formation of the solar system, but it isn’t traveling in a straight line from Earth to the orbit of Jupiter. Instead, it is performing a series of slingshot maneuvers to help it on its journey, including a recent maneuver around Earth. This weekend, a few lucky observers were able to see Lucy as it performed an Earth flyby before heading back out into space.

The spacecraft came closest to Earth at 7:04 a.m. ET on Sunday, October 16, when it passed within 220 miles of the Earth’s surface. Originally, it had been set to come event closer, but the Lucy team chose to keep a little more distance due to problems that Lucy has had with one of its solar arrays. Lucy has two round arrays, which deployed following launch, but one of them failed to deploy fully and did not latch into place.

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