I’m always delighted when a spacecraft is used for observations outside its mission, proving how creative engineers and scientists can be given the opportunity. And earlier this month, the total lunar eclipse presented one spacecraft with a unique chance to view the event from space. And that’s just what NASA’s Lucy spacecraft did.

Lucy launched in October 2021 and is currently heading back toward Earth for another gravity assist this October to help sling the spacecraft out to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. This trajectory meant Lucy’s L’LORRI camera was able to capture the eclipse from about 100 million kilometers away.

Unfortunately, the timelapse video of the event is only about two seconds long. It’s definitely a “blink and you’ll miss it” clip. We’ll have a link to it in our show notes at DailySpace.org, so go take a moment to enjoy watching the Moon just sort of blip into darkness.

More Information

NASA Goddard press release