Theodore Talk: The NASA Psyche Mission: First Journey to a Metal World

How are habitable planets like the Earth built? How do we learn what they were built from, and when? We can learn about the rocky exteriors, but one fundamental mystery remains: the metal core.

When our solar system was just an infant, thousands of planetesimals (tiny planet-like objects) formed in fewer than one million years. Many melted, allowing metal cores to form inside rocky mantles. One of these metal cores may still exist, revealed in the asteroid (16) Psyche. The NASA Psyche mission is sending a robotic (uncrewed) spacecraft on a long journey through space to visit this asteroid, which orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. We are sending the probe there because this asteroid seems to be made largely of metal, and to have a partially metal surface. This will be the first metallic object humans have ever visited! It's primary, fundamental exploration, visiting a new class of solar system object.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Foundation and Regents Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University and Principal Investigator of the NASA Psyche mission, will discuss what is known and what is hypothesized about the asteroid, how we have planned a mission and built a spacecraft to study this unknown object, and how we progressed with the mission through COVID, with its intense challenges to teams. Now, two years after launch, the spacecraft is soon to receive a gravity assist from Mars, and slingshot out further in the solar system to intersect with and go into orbit around the asteroid in 2029.

Register for this presentation here.

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Theodore Talks take place on Zoom the fourth Sunday of each month at 2:30 p.m. CT.

A list of future Theodore Talks can be found on the Mensa National Events Calendar at https://www.us.mensa.org/attend/calendar/.

Questions?  Contact Brad Lucht at MensaTheodoreTalks@gmail.com.