Lucy Zipped Past Earth to get a Gravitational Assist Towards Jupiter’s Trojans

Orbital mechanics are seen as marvels of gravitational assists. It's usually done for a combination of fuel savings and speed, as it's sometimes quicker to travel multiple times around planets in the inner solar system to reach locations in the outer solar system. Lucy made such a maneuver on its way out to the asteroids that it was both a marvel of precision and speed.

The flyby took place about a year into the mission time for the probe. Half of the time will be spent in transit. There is a significant speed increase afforded by maneuvers.

Lucy is already travelling at 8 km a second. It needs a boost from its home planet in order to get to Jupiter on time. It is now traveling at close to 15 kilometers per second.

The probe needs to swing close to Earth in order to get there. If you were in Western Australia on October 16th, you could have seen Lucy for a short time.

Lucy was able to avoid the many obstacles that were in its path. Lucy had to maneuver through some of the crowded paths that the Space Force was able to monitor. Communication between the teams was important as the probe traveled through the plane.

If there had been a potential collision, the team running Lucy had two options: either kick the thrusters on so the probe would pass by sooner or later, or they could have waited. Lucy was 48 kilometers away from the potential collision if a four-second speed-up had been used.

Even if it was slightly dangerous, some of the best brains in the business decided that this path was the best one for Lucy. The probe is on its way to the Trojan asteroids, where it will arrive in the year 2027.

Lucy will get another boost from its home planet on its way out to the outer solar system in 24 years. It serves the same purpose as this one, going where no probe has gone before.

You can learn more.

Lucy is going to fly past thousands of objects.

Lucy's solar array is fixed. Most of the time.

Lucy is going to visit Jupiter's asteroids.

One of the Lucy Mission's asteroids has a moon.