Lucy is the first mission to explore Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, an ancient population of stellar “fossils” orbiting the Sun
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured this image (which has been cropped) of Earth on October 15, 2022, as part of an instrument calibration sequence at a distance of 380,000 miles (620,000 km).
The top left of the image includes a view of Hadar, Ethiopia, home to the 3.2-million-year-old ancestral human fossil for which the spacecraft is named.
Lucy is the first mission to explore Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, an ancient population of stellar “fossils” orbiting the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter.
To reach these distant asteroids, the Lucy spacecraft’s orbit includes three Earth-gravity assists to boost it on its journey.
The photo was taken with Lucy’s Terminal Tracking Camera (T2CAM) system, a pair of identical cameras responsible for tracking asteroids.
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.
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