OFF TO EXPLORE COSMIC ORIGINS

NASA launch aims for Jupiter asteroids

Lucy’s in the sky — with lab-grown diamonds.

NASA on Saturday launched a space probe named Lucy on a 12-year mission to explore Jupiter’s so-called Trojan asteroids and potentially find new clues of how the solar system was created.

The uncrewed spacecraft launched at 5:34 a.m. aboard an Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida (left), sending it on a roundabout trek spanning nearly 4 billion miles.

The probe is named after the 3.2 million-year-old skeletal remains of a human ancestor uncovered in Ethiopia nearly a half-century ago. That discovery got its name from the 1967 Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” — leading the space agency to send the craft soaring into space with the band’s lyrics and other luminaries’ words of wisdom imprinted on a plaque.

Lucy also carried a disc made of lab-grown diamonds for one of its science instruments.

Ringo Starr paid tribute to his late colleague John Lennon — credited for writing the song that inspired the trek — in a prerecorded video.

“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.”

Over the next 12 years, Lucy will zoom by one main-belt asteroid and seven Trojan asteroids — debris from when the solar system was created billions of years ago.

NASA is planning another mission next month that takes a page out of the action flick “Armageddon.” The agency is set to launch a spaceship to wallop an asteroid’s moon — just in case.