A total lunar eclipse is observed by NASA's Lucy spacecraft.

 The NASA Lucy mission, coordinated by Southwest Research Institute Principal Investigator Dr. Hal Levison, successfully saw the complete lunar eclipse in May 2022 from a unique vantage point 64 million miles (100 million kilometers) from Earth.

On May 15, the Earth cast its shadow on the moon for a few hours. This total lunar eclipse was visible from deep space as well as over much of the United States. Despite its great distance, the Lucy spacecraft was able to utilize its high-resolution imaging gear to observe the moon move into the Earth's shadow and vanish.

"While total lunar eclipses aren't uncommon—they happen around once a year or so—you don't get an opportunity to see one from a completely different perspective very often," Levison added. "Everyone was ecstatic when the team discovered Lucy would be able to see the lunar eclipse as part of the instrument calibration process."

On October 16, 2021, the Lucy spacecraft was launched. It is currently in route to Earth, where it will receive a gravity assist on October 16, 2022, to aid in its voyage to the Trojan asteroids. This previously undiscovered population of asteroids that precede and trail Jupiter in its orbit around the sun are "fossils" of planet creation; they are expected to contain crucial clues to help us comprehend our solar system's history.

From 8:40 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. CDT on May 15, Lucy's L'LORRI instrument, a high-resolution black-and-white camera manufactured by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, collected 86 1-millisecond exposures to generate a time-lapse film of the first half of the total lunar eclipse.

"It took an incredible collective effort to capture these photographs. To acquire this data, the instrument, guidance, navigation, and science operations teams had to work together to get the Earth and the moon in the same frame "Dr. John Spencer, Acting Deputy Principal Investigator at SwRI, agreed. "And all of this had to be done while the spacecraft was operating in a very difficult environment."

The spacecraft was built to function at the Trojans, which is more than five times further away from the sun than it is presently. To avoid overheating the spacecraft, the spacecraft only saw the first half of the eclipse due to the significantly warmer temperature environment.