This week’s lunar eclipse wasn’t solely noticed from the bottom and from the Worldwide House Station — it was additionally noticed from 64 million miles (100 million kilometers) away from Earth by the Lucy spacecraft. Lucy, which is an uncrewed craft from NASA and the Southwest Analysis Institute on its method to research the Trojan asteroids within the orbit of Jupiter, acquired a view of the lunar eclipse on Might 15 and was in a position to snap photos over a interval of three hours which have been changed into a time-lapse video:
The photographs have been taken utilizing Lucy’s L’LORRI instrument which captures high-resolution black and white photos. It took 86 photos in complete which have been mixed collectively to create the time-lapse.
Though Lucy is much away from Earth, the instrument was delicate sufficient to have the ability to view the moon because it handed into the Earth’s shadow and was hidden in darkness for a short while.
”Whereas complete lunar eclipses aren’t that uncommon — they occur yearly or so — it isn’t that always that you just get an opportunity to look at them from a wholly special approach,” stated Lucy’s principal investigator, Hal Levison, in a statement. “When the group realized Lucy had an opportunity to look at this lunar eclipse as part of the instrument calibration course of, everybody was extremely excited.”
Lucy was within the neighborhood of Earth as a result of, following its launch in October 2021, it was touring towards the Earth to carry out a flyby in October 2022. By passing shut to an enormous physique just like the Earth the spacecraft can get a gravity-assisted increase to assist take it to its distant vacation spot. Throughout its journey, the group could make use of its devices like its 4 cameras to look at phenomena just like the lunar eclipse, however this requires some inventive scheduling as this isn’t what these devices are primarily designed for.
“Capturing these photos actually was a tremendous group effort. The instrument, steering, navigation, and science operations groups all needed to work collectively to gather these knowledge, getting the Earth and the Moon in the identical body,” stated Performing Deputy Principal Investigator John Spencer. “And all this needed to be completed whereas working the spacecraft in a really difficult atmosphere.”
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