NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has captured a stunning image of Earth at a distance of 620000 km from Earth.
NASA The Lucy spacecraft, the first mission to the Trojan asteroids, captured stunning images of Earth as well as photos of the Earth and Moon. NASA in its statement shared that the spacecraft captured the image as part of an instrument calibration sequence at a distance of 380,000 miles (620,000 km) from Earth. According to the image shared by WE space agency, top left of the image has a view of Hadar, Ethiopia. This was once the home of the 3.2 million year old human ancestors fossil and the Lucy spacecraft will discover the same.
Nasa said, “Lucy was the first mission to discover Jupiter Trojan asteroids, an ancient population of asteroid “fossils” orbiting the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter”. It further explains that the spacecraft’s orbit consists of three Earth-assisted gravitational forces to propel it on its journey to these distant asteroids.
The image of the earth was recorded by Lucy’s Terminal Tracking Camera (T2CAM) system, i.e. a pair of identical cameras tracked small planet in Lucy’s high speed encounter. The T2CAM camera system was designed, engineered and tested by Malin Space Science Systems while it was integrated and operated by Lockheed Martin.
In addition to Earth, the Lucy spacecraft also captured images of the Earth and Moon from a distance of 1.4 million km(s). The image highlights the incredible gap between The earth and the moon. According to reports, Lucy will build three of Earth’s flybys to increase its speed to approach Trojan asteroids – small celestial bodies orbiting the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter.
During her 12-year journey, Lucy will fly by nine asteroids and survey their diversity, to better understand the formation of the solar system.
