Happy 50th anniversary, Lucy!

Nov 25, 2024

By Ivy Knudsen,

50 years ago yesterday, at the edge of a small gully in Ethiopia, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson noticed what appeared to be the remains of a bipedal human ancestor. These remains—skull fragments, a femur, ribs, and pelvic bones—painted a clearer image of humanity’s origins than ever before. The fossil was appropriately named Dinkinesh, meaning “you are marvelous” in Amharic, an Ethiopian language. In the English speaking world, the fossil is better known by her nickname “Lucy,” a name bestowed on it as the team blared the song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” while celebrating the discovery. Lucy has since been synonymous with the study of humanity’s origins.

The history of how life evolved is fascinating, and going back even farther in time only raises the intrigue, leading scientists to the question: How has our solar system assembled itself over almost a billion years? To answer this, we must look to the “fossils” of our solar system, the Trojan asteroids. The Trojan asteroids are relics of the formation of our solar system and can be thought of as the fossils of planet formation. Inspired by the famous fossil namesake, a SwRI-led team proposed the mission Lucy to visit these asteroids.

NASA’s Lucy mission, completing flybys of the Trojan asteroids to collect information about the early stages of our solar system. The Trojans share an orbit with Jupiter, in Jupiter’s L4 and L5 LaGrange points; gravitationally stable regions of the solar system, sort of like celestial parking lots. These small bodies originated in the outer solar system, were flung inwards as the giant planets migrated billions of years ago, staying preserved ever since. Flying Lucy to the Trojans will uncover an abundance of information about the early years of our solar system, as well as information about the edges of our solar system during that time. On its way out to Jupiter’s orbit, the Lucy spacecraft will visit two main belt asteroids, named Dinkinesh and Donaldjohanson, preserving the legacy of the Lucy hominin and the archeologist who discovered her.

The feverous pursuit to understand how we got here, and why we are here, requires constant curiosity, innovation, and collaboration. Each new discovery inspires and motivates more fields and generations to keep pushing our species forward, by developing ways to understand our past. In the 50 years since the Lucy fossil was discovered, similar discoveries have jointly uncovered a more complicated web of human evolution than was previously thought to exist. With the Lucy spacecraft on its way to see our own solar systems fossils, it is empowering to think what will come of the next 50 years, and what the legacy of Lucy will continue to inspire after that.

Here is to 50 years of Lucys legacy – on Earth and beyond.

Banner Image: Hadar, Ethiopia. Credit: Institute of Human Origins