Lucy Science Planning: Incorporating Lessons Learned from over a Decade of Space Ops Experience

Abstract

The Lucy mission will be the first spacecraft to study the Trojan asteroids, located on the same orbit as Jupiter at the Lagrange Points for the Jupiter-Sun orbit. Due to the large distances that the spacecraft is required to travel in order to survey the six selected asteroids, the primary mission will take over 12 years to complete. How do we design software to stand the test of time? In this paper we detail how the Lucy team implemented the lessons learned from multiple missions (Rosetta, New Horizons, CYGNSS, etc …), as well as leveraging the work of the open source software community to accelerate the development of the Trojan Planning File Generator (TPFG); the science planning and sequencing system for the Lucy mission. We explore how the convergence, and increasing stability of software practices developed around the world lead to the design decisions made on the TPFG project. TPFG is a multi-part system; a Python back-end that powers a web-based interface. We also show how utilizing popular frameworks, and following best practices have streamlined software development and enabled the Lucy team to develop an initial working version in a matter of months.