. The goal of the mission was to explore a group of asteroids known as the Trojan asteroids orbiting near Jupiter to gain a better understanding of our solar system. After over two years of intense scientific instrumentation, it had become clear that this wasn’t just an asteroid—it was two asteroids that were orbiting each other, forming a binary asteroid system! This discovery has changed our understanding of binary asteroid systems, which are now seen to be far more common than scientists previously realized. The Lucy mission revealed that binaries can come in all shapes and sizes, challenging our understanding of how these systems form and evolve – and potentially providing scientist with new insight into other, more complex binary asteroid systems in the Voyage of Exploration!
