NASA Lucy Locks In Camera Settings for Trojan Flybys No Telescope Can Preview

NASA's Lucy spacecraft has spent this spring imaging four of its primary Trojan asteroid targets using its high-resolution L'LORRI camera - not to gather science yet, but to solve a specific engineering problem that no Earth-based observatory has ever been able to address: what these ancient space rocks actually look like when you're not staring at them straight into the sun. Mission scientists have published the update today. The mission team completed downloading and processing those calibration images in July 2026, and the resulting camera settings will shape what Lucy can deliver when it reaches its first Trojan target, Eurybates, in August 2027.Every time astronomers on Earth have photographed Jupiter's Trojan asteroids - the two swarms of ancient rocky bodies that orbit the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter - they have seen them from roughly the same direction as the Sun itself.