Trojan Mission Lucy Tested its Solar Panels for the First Time. Those Things are Huge

Space missions often have to go where the sun don’t shine. Or at least where it shines very faintly.  That is particularly important if the mission draws its power from the sun.  Luckily, engineers have a way of dealing with that problem – just make really really big solar panels.  That is exactly what they did for Lucy, a mission to visit the Trojan asteroids around Jupiter.  Those sails have now been tested on the ground, and they are magnificent.

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