(music throughout)
The Lucy mission is a planetary mission
to the Trojan asteroids that are around Jupiter.
It's going to survey actually a total of eight targets, seven asteroids
around Jupiter and one asteroid in the main asteroid belt.
Once you know where you're going and the type of science that you want to take.
One of the things that you start looking at is the spacecraft.
What size spacecraft, where is it going, how much power does it need to carry?
Does it need solar rays, what type of solar arrays?
What type of vehicle is going to be used to launch it into space.
So that dictates how much mass you can carry.
And one of the things I do as a project manager is to assemble a team
of scientists and engineers and technicians and business
people to design that overall spacecraft to achieve your mission.
In designing the spacecraft, you are always thinking
about what type of environment is it going to be subjected to.
Is it going to orbit around Earth?
Is it going into deep space?
Is it going to Mars?
Is it going close to the Sun?
And so as engineers, one of the things that you're thinking about
very early on is how can you design this system and test the system
in order to verify and convince yourself that it's going to survive in space.
And as part of that, it goes through a very rigorous test program.
And so we call it shaking and baking.
And so we actually put it through what we call
a thermal vac chamber in which we simulate the space environment.
You also put it on
what we call a vibe table in which we vibrate it, so we shake it.
And one of the important things
that you have to do in order to be convinced that it's going to survive
is to make sure that the environment in which you're testing it in
the simulated environment is harsher than what it's going to see in space.
So once you subject the spacecraft or that instrument to that environment,
then you can have confidence
that it's going to last the lifetime that it's been designed for.