NASA launches an asteroid hunter named Lucy with a Beatles connection

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A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the Lucy spacecraft lifts off from Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Saturday in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

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John Raoux/AP

Lucy is named after the 3.2 million-year-old skeletal remains of a human ancestor found in Ethiopia nearly a half-century ago. That discovery got its name from the 1967 Beatles song «Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,» prompting NASA to send the spacecraft soaring with band members’ lyrics and other luminaries’ words of wisdom imprinted on a plaque. The spacecraft also carried a disc made of lab-grown diamonds for one of its science instruments.

In a prerecorded video for NASA, Beatles drummer Ringo Starr paid tribute to his late colleague John Lennon, credited for writing the song that inspired all this.

«I’m so excited — Lucy is going back in the sky with diamonds. Johnny will love that,» Starr said. «Anyway, if you meet anyone up there, Lucy, give them peace and love from me.»

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NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is seen with its housing at the AstroTech facility in Titusville, Fla., on Sept. 29. It will be first space mission to explore a diverse population of small bodies known as the Jupiter Trojan asteroids

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John Raoux/AP

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Despite their orbits, the Trojans are far from the planet and mostly scattered far from each other. So there’s essentially zero chance of Lucy getting clobbered by one as it swoops past its targets, said Levison of Southwest Research Institute, the mission’s principal scientist.

Lucy will swing past Earth next October and again in 2024 to get enough gravitational oomph to make it all the way out to Jupiter’s orbit. On the way there, the spacecraft will zip past asteroid Donaldjohanson between Mars and Jupiter. The aptly named rock will serve as a 2025 warm-up act for the science instruments.

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A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with the Lucy spacecraft aboard is seen in this 2 1/2-minute exposure photo as it launches Saturday.

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Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP

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Lucy will pass within 600 miles (965 kilometers) of each target; the biggest one is about 70 miles (113 kilometers) across.

«Are there mountains? Valleys? Pits? Mesas? Who knows? I’m sure we’re going to be surprised,» said Johns Hopkins University’s Hal Weaver, who’s in charge of Lucy’s black-and-white camera. «But we can hardly wait to see what … images will reveal about these fossils from the formation of the solar system.»

NASA plans to launch another mission next month to test whether humans might be able to alter an asteroid’s orbit — practice in case Earth ever has a killer rock headed this way.

• asteroids
• NASA