NASA's asteroid surveyor named Lucy had captured photos of Earth from a distance before its trip to Jupiter's Trojan asteroids.
The first photo was taken on October 13, when the spacecraft's distance was still 890,000 miles from Earth. The second one was captured two days later when Lucy went through an instrument calibration sequence 380,000 miles away.
The image was possible due to the Lucy spacecraft's Terminal Tracking Camera (T2CAM) system. The system consists of two identical cameras, so Lucy will be able to track the asteroids during the spacecraft's high-speed encounters. According to NASA, the system was built and tested by Malin Space Science Systems, while Lockheed Martin integrated the cameras onto the asteroid surveyor and operated them.
The Mission
NASA's Lucy will be the first to explore the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, which are ancient space rocks that make hold answers to the creation of the solar system and maybe even how life on Earth began. It was launched more than a year ago, on October 16, 2021, at 5:32 a.m. EDT. It was atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from the Kennedy Space Center, as mentioned by Space.
The asteroid surveyor will be performing three flybys of Earth. The purpose of this is so the spacecraft can gain speed for its voyage to the Trojan steroids. Lucy has already executed one of the slingshot maneuvers out of three. Lucy came within 220 miles of the Earth's surface in the first flyby, which is a lower altitude compared to the International Space Station.
The Lucy spacecraft's destination, which is where the asteroids are, is the same distance from the gas giant as it is from the Sun. They occupy two Lagrange points of Jupiter, which also happen to be the only locations to be as close to Jupiter as possible. In its 12-year mission, the Lucy spacecraft will pass by nine asteroids, including one in the main asteroid belt.
Mainly, the mission will allow researchers to study the asteroids' composition, density, and diversity. Scientists believe that these rocks are four billion-year-old remnants from when the solar system was formed. According to the International Astronomical Union, Jupiter has more than 12,000 Trojan asteroids orbiting it.
Namesake
The name "Lucy" does seem different from all the other spacecraft names like Apollo or Artemis. The story behind the name involves a three million-year-old fossil found in northern Ethiopia. Donald Johanson, a paleoanthropologist at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona University, made this discovery back in 1974. The discovery was then nicknamed Lucy.
The fossil is said to be a 3.2 million-year-old relative of humans, which adds to the growing knowledge of humankind about where life began. As a poetic parallel, the NASA mission, whose aim is to gain more knowledge about the beginning of life on Earth through rocks in space, named its spacecraft after the Australopithecus afarensis fossil.
