The Lucy ship captures the Earth and the Moon heading for the Trojan asteroids

Oct. 25 () –

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured this image of Earth on October 15, 2022, as part of an instrument calibration sequence at a distance of 620,000 kilometers.

The upper left of the image includes a view of Hadar, Ethiopia, home to the 3.2-million-year-old fossil human ancestor that gave the spacecraft its name. it’s a statement that accompanies the image.

Lucy is the first mission to explore Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, an ancient population of asteroid “fossils” orbiting the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter. To reach these distant asteroids, the Lucy spacecraft’s trajectory includes three Earth gravity assists to propel it on its journey towards these enigmatic asteroids.

The image was taken with Lucy’s Terminal Tracking Camera (T2CAM) system, a pair of identical cameras that are responsible for tracking asteroids during Lucy’s high-speed encounters. The T2CAM system was designed, built, and tested by Malin Space Science Systems; Lockheed Martin integrated the T2CAMs into the Lucy spacecraft and operates them.

Two days earlier, on October 13, 2022, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured another image of the Earth and the Moon from a distance of 1.4 million kilometers, as part of the aforementioned instrument calibration sequence.

On her 12-year journey, Lucy will fly by a record number of asteroids and examine their diversity, searching for clues to better understand the formation of the solar system.