NASA's daring Lucy asteroid mission is ready to launch

[Eldorado]

NASA's newest asteroid mission, a spacecraft targeting space rocks that orbit ahead of and behind Jupiter, is ready to begin its journey.

Called Lucy, the mission is scheduled to launch on Saturday (Oct. 16) at 5:34 a.m. EDT (0934 GMT) aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. You can watch the launch live at Space.com courtesy of NASA, with coverage starting at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT).

"This team has put in so much work to build a spacecraft that is truly a work of art," Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, the Lucy project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said during a news conference held on Wednesday (Oct. 13). "The spacecraft work is complete, it's been powered on, the team is monitoring it and we are ready to launch."

Space dot com

[Still Waters]

Update:

A NASA spacecraft named Lucy rocketed into the sky with diamonds Saturday morning on a 12-year quest to explore eight asteroids.

An Atlas V rocket blasted off before dawn, sending Lucy on a roundabout orbital journey spanning nearly 4 billion miles (6.3 billion kilometers). "I'm just elated," NASA's associate administrator, Robert Cabana, said following liftoff. "This is the coolest darn mission."

https://phys.org/news/2021-10-nasa-asteroid-hunter-lucy-soars.html