NASA Lucy spacecraft captures stunning image of Earth as it heads towards trojan asteroids

tech.hindustantimes.com:

NASA Lucy spacecraft, the first mission to the Trojan asteroids, has captured a stunning image of Earth as well as a photo of the Earth and the Moon. NASA in its statement shared that the spacecraft has captured the image as a part of an instrument calibration sequence at a distance of 380,000 miles (620,000 km) from Earth. As per the image shared by the US space agency, the upper left of the image has a view of Hadar, Ethiopia. It was once home to the 3.2 million-year-old human ancestor fossil and the Lucy spacecraft will explore the same.

Nasa said, “Lucy is the first mission to explore the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, an ancient population of asteroid "fossils" that orbit around the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter.” It further explained that the spacecraft's trajectory includes three Earth gravity assists to boost it on its journey to these distant asteroids.

The image of earth has been captured by Lucy's Terminal Tracking Camera (T2CAM) system i.e, a pair of identical cameras that tracks down the asteroids during Lucy's high-speed encounters. The T2CAM camera system has been designed, built and tested by Malin Space Science Systems while it was integrated and operated by Lockheed Martin.

Apart from the Earth itself, the Lucy spacecraft also captured an image of the Earth and the Moon from a distance of 1.4 million km(s). The image highlights the incredible distance between the Earth and the moon. As per the report, Lucy will be making three flybys of Earth in order to boost its speed to reach the Trojan asteroids - small bodies that orbit the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter.

During its 12-year journey, Lucy will fly by 9 asteroids and survey their diversity, in order to understand the solar system's