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NASA's daring Lucy asteroid mission is ready to launch - Space.com

NASA's daring Lucy asteroid mission is ready to launch - Space.com

NASA's daring Lucy asteroid mission is ready to launch - Space.com
Oct 13, 2021 1 min, 49 secs

Called Lucy, the mission is scheduled to launch on Saturday (Oct. 16) at 5:34 a.m.

EDT (0934 GMT) aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

"This team has put in so much work to build a spacecraft that is truly a work of art," Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, the Lucy project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said during a news conference held on Wednesday (Oct. 13).

The launch will kick off a 12-year journey during which the Lucy spacecraft will swing past eight different asteroids in hopes of helping scientists understand how our solar system came to be the way it is today.

Lucy won't be riding quite the rocket that the United Launch Alliance (ULA) had in mind.

The company was also due to launch an uncrewed test flight dubbed OFT-2 of Boeing's Starliner capsule to the International Space Station this summer, but Boeing had to retreat from the launch pad to address a valve issue in the spacecraft.

"We were able to make that a positive in that we were able to use the OFT[-2] booster and convert it for use for Lucy," Omar Baez, launch director for Lucy at NASA's Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, said during the news conference.

The Lucy team is hoping to get the mission on its way as early in the three-week launch period as possible to ensure the spacecraft can get on its way.

Fortunately, the weather forecast looks quite promising for the mission's approximately 75-minute launch window on Saturday, according to the mission's launch weather officer, Jessica Williams of the 45th Weather Squadron, who called it "a beautiful morning for launch" during the news conference.

If the mission can't launch on its first opportunity, things begin to look a little grimmer: The spacecraft's Sunday (Oct. 17) opportunity offers just a 50% chance of cooperative weather as tall cumulus clouds and rainshowers threaten; meanwhile, Monday offers 60% odds of favorable weather for launch due to lingering showers and winds.

"I'm feeling really good about it," Kevin Berry, an aerospace engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center and flight dynamics team leader for the Lucy mission, told Space.com.

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