Spacecraft flyby offers unique Earth View

The Lucy spacecraft sent back amazing long-distance photos of Planet Earth recently.

The newly released and awe-inspiring images were captured on October 13th and October 15th 2022, from distances of 890,000 and 380,000 miles respectively.

The Lucy spacecraft, launched on October 16th 2021, used a recent Earth flyby as a gravity assist to accelerate it deeper into the solar system. The spacecraft is named after “Lucy,” the fossils of a partial hominin and long-ago human ancestor found in Ethiopia in 1974.

It will have another Earth flyby in 2024 before it flies by an inner-belt asteroid in 2025. It will also fly by a set of trojan asteroids in 2027 orbiting the sun at the same distance as Jupiter. The mission plans include another 2031 Earth fly-by followed by a trip to a binary asteroid in 2032.

The spacecraft will closely study the asteroids for clues on how the planet may have formed 4.5 billion years ago during the early stages of the solar system’s life.