NASA Lucy spacecraft captures moon images and 'Terminator Mosaic'

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has captured new high resolution images of the Moon’s Central Highlands surface taken while the spacecraft was between Earth and the Moon.

The Oct. 16 images were taken approximately 140,000 to 160,000 miles from the moon after Lucy flew by the Earth for its first of three gravity assists, the space agency said. They included a “Terminator Mosaic,” as well as single images.

The images were made by the Lucy Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, provided and operated by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. They were captured while Lucy was between the Earth and the moon.

The mosaic was made from five separate 1-millisecond exposures and shows the moon’s Southern Highlands. That image includes the ancient, lava-filled basin Mare Imbrium and the bright, fresh crater Copernicus.

A single frame Lucy image of the Mare Imbrium shows a roughly 600-mile wide portion of lunar terrain. The Apennine Mountains, part of the Imbrium basin rim, was the landing site for the 1971 Apollo 15 mission, NASA said.

The space agency said in a statement that a single frame photo of the Lunar Central Highlands also was captured, consisting of 10 separate, 2-millisecond exposures and covers an 800-mile-wide patch near the center of the last quarter moon.

Lucy, NASA said, will be the first ever mission to explore the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. Those asteroids lead and follow Jupiter in its orbit around the sun.

NASA said in a statement that the Lucy team will “use the cratering record of the asteroids to better understand the history of our solar system.”