Lucy, the upcoming mission to asteroid Psyche, has been approved by NASA to enter its final development stage, which means Lucy gets to go from design and fabrication to much more interesting activities such as delivery, testing, assembly, and integration. We get to build a spacecraft, y’all! 

The building commenced on August 10 at Lockheed Martin in Colorado. Next up for Lucy is the Mission Operation Review in October. That is when the team will have to demonstrate that the spacecraft’s navigation, planning, command, and science operations requirements have been met.

The spacecraft is expected to be shipped next July for final integration with the launch vehicle. The launch window opens on October 16, 2021. Per the press release: Lucy will still have a long path ahead flying out to the distance of Jupiter to make close fly-bys past a record-breaking number of asteroids. The spacecraft will encounter the first of its eight targets, a main belt asteroid, in 2025. Lucy will reach the first of seven Trojan asteroids in 2027 and fly past the final binary pair in 2033.

As always, we will bring you the launch when it happens and the science when it comes in.

More Information

Southwest Research Institute press release