Lucy spacecraft captures images of Earth, Moon ahead of gravity assist

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured a picture of the Earth on Oct 15, 2022, and a picture of the Earth and the Moon on Oct. 13 as part of an instrument calibration sequence.

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured a picture (which has been cropped) of the Earth on Oct 15, 2022, as part of an instrument calibration sequence at a distance of 380,000 miles (620,000 km). The higher left of the picture features a view of Hadar, Ethiopia, residence to the three.2 million-year-old human ancestor fossil for which the spacecraft was named.

Lucy is the primary mission to discover the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, an historic inhabitants of asteroid “fossils” that orbit across the Solar on the similar distance as Jupiter. To achieve these distant asteroids, the Lucy spacecraft’s trajectory consists of three Earth gravity assists to spice up it on its journey to those enigmatic asteroids.

The picture was taken with Lucy’s Terminal Monitoring Digicam (T2CAM) system, a pair of equivalent cameras which can be answerable for monitoring the asteroids throughout Lucy’s high-speed encounters. The T2CAM system was designed, constructed and examined by Malin House Science Techniques; Lockheed Martin Built-in the T2CAMs onto the Lucy spacecraft and operates them.

On October 13, 2022, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured a picture of the Earth and the Moon from a distance of 890,000 miles (1.4 million km). The picture was taken as a part of an instrument calibration sequence because the spacecraft approached Earth for its first of three Earth gravity assists. These Earth flybys present Lucy with the velocity required to succeed in the Trojan asteroids—small our bodies that orbit the Solar on the similar distance as Jupiter. On its 12 12 months journey, Lucy will fly by a report breaking variety of asteroids and survey their variety, in search of clues to raised perceive the formation of the solar system.

The picture was taken with Lucy’s Terminal Monitoring Digicam (T2CAM) system, a pair of equivalent cameras which can be answerable for monitoring the asteroids throughout Lucy’s excessive velocity encounters. The T2CAM system was designed, constructed and examined by Malin House Science Techniques; Lockheed Martin Built-in the T2CAMs onto the Lucy spacecraft and operates them.