Once we consider Earth, we consider a spherical blue planet suspended in area. Nevertheless, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft, designed to discover asteroids close to Jupiter, checked out Earth and captured fascinating photos of our house planet and the Moon. Color? All grey. data on the identical NASA’s Earth Observatory said“A spacecraft designed to probe historic asteroids close to Jupiter will attain these distant targets with a bit of assist from Earth. NASA’s Lucy spacecraft makes use of Earth’s gravity to propel it past Mars. Within the course of, its cameras seize fascinating photos of our house. caught the planet.”

The Terminal Monitoring Digicam (T2CAM) in Lucy captured this picture: Soil and the Moon on October 13, 2022, and the picture of the day for January 1, 2023. At the moment, the spacecraft was 890,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) from Earth—virtually 4 occasions farther from Earth to the Moon. In line with the knowledge, the picture was acquired throughout an instrument calibration sequence as Lucy approached Earth for the mission’s first of three gravity assists.

These slingshot maneuvers round Earth will give Lucy the power she might want to attain the Trojan asteroids; asteroids trapped in orbit on the identical distance Sun as Jupiter. The icy rocks are regarded as historic relics from early occasions. solar systemFashioned 4.5 billion years in the past. However these ‘fossil’ asteroids have by no means been studied so carefully.

The second picture was taken on October 15, 2022, when the spacecraft was 380,000 miles (620,000 kilometers) from Earth. That is greater than the gap between Earth and Earth. Moon, however shut sufficient to see some acquainted options. Clouds (white) are swirling over continents (gentle grey) and oceans (darkish grey) on this grayscale picture, Earth Observatory studies.

Lucy was chosen due to the fossil skeleton’s contribution to understanding human evolution. The spacecraft is predicted to advance our data of the origins of our photo voltaic system and the formation of its planets, together with Earth.

On October 16, 2022, the spacecraft handed inside 220 miles (350 kilometers) of Earth—nearer than the orbit of the Worldwide Area Station. The shut encounter with Earth thrusts Lucy into an space full of satellites and particles. Lucy’s staff took the hazard into consideration and ready a number of collision avoidance maneuvers upfront.

In 2024, a second Earth gravity help will push Lucy out of the photo voltaic system’s major asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and into one among two Trojan asteroid swarms that share an orbit with Jupiter. A 3rd gravity help in 2030 will ship Lucy in direction of the second Trojan asteroid group.