KEY POINTS

  • NASA shared some of the photos Lucy snapped before and after its close pass
  • One of the photos shows just how distant the Earth and Moon are from each other
  • The photos of the Moon show its craters and even an Apollo landing site

NASA's Lucy spacecraft recently made a close pass of the Earth, and it captured stunning snaps of the Earth and the Moon.

The Lucy spacecraft swung close to the Earth on Oct. 16 for the first of its three gravity assists on its mission towards the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. This week, NASA shared some of the photos Lucy snapped just before and after its close pass, showing incredible photos of our planet and the Moon.

One of the photos the agency shared was a cropped one of the Earth. Taken using the Terminal Tracking Camera (T2CAM) system of identical cameras, Lucy captured it on Oct. 15, a day before the close approach, when it was 380,000 miles (620,000 kilometers) away from Earth.

The image, which was taken as a part of its instrument calibration, shows an incredible view of one side of our planet. This includes a view of Hadar, Ethiopia, according to the agency.

NASA also shared the photo that Lucy captured with the T2CAM days prior, on Oct. 13. This time, it was still much farther at 890,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) away. It was also a part of the instrument calibration. But this time, it captured a rather haunting view of both the Earth and the Moon in one image.

In it, one can see just how distant the two objects seem to be from each other.

About eight hours after the close pass, Lucy captured stunning close-up images of the Moon, showing the deep craters on the surface.

At the time, the spacecraft was between the Earth and the Moon, being about 140,000 miles (230,000 kilometers) away from the Earth's satellite. Its position at the center of the two objects gives it a somewhat similar view of what people can see on Earth, the agency noted.

This time, it was taken using the Lucy Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (L'LORRI) and shows a patch of the Moon's surface that's about 600 miles wide. It even captured a piece of history, as it features one of the Apollo landing sites.

On the NASA feature, one may see two other photos of the Moon taken just hours after the close pass. One of them is of the Moon's Central Highlands, showing a swathe of craters both familiar and relatively new. Meanwhile, the other shows a mosaic that stretches from the upper to the lower part of the Moon.

In a few years, Lucy will come close to Earth again for its second close pass, bringing it closer to becoming the first spacecraft to visit the "never-before-visited" asteroid population.

Moon
NASA Galileo spacecraft took this image of Earth moon on December 7, 1992 on its way to explore the Jupiter system in 1995-97. The distinct bright ray crater at the bottom of the image is the Tycho impact basin. NASA/JPL/USGS
Moon Earth