Lucy was whipped by Earth as it flew by to get to the asteroids. As it passed by, it took pictures of the Earth and the moon. These images were shared by NASA.
Lucy is going to learn about the formation of the solar system by going to the asteroids in Jupiter. Over the course of a dozen years, the asteroids will be reached by the spacecraft, which was launched in October 2021. Lucy went back to Earth to get a gravity boost to help carry it.
The black and white Terminal Tracking Camera (T2CAM) system was used to take this picture. The cameras are designed to track the asteroids it will eventually be studying, but they were also able to take a picture of the Earth. Lucy captured a lunar eclipse from space earlier in the year, and taking images of known targets such as the Earth is useful for calibrating the instruments.
A second picture taken with the same camera system on October 13 shows both the Earth and the moon as seen from a distance.
Two more Earth flybys are scheduled for December 2024 and December 2030. Lucy is going to perform a flyby of Donaldjohanson, an asteroid named after a paleoanthropologist who discovered Lucy's fossils.
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