For the first time ever, we are
exploring a world made not of rock or ice,
but of metal.
Mission to a
Metal World
Deep within the terrestrial planets, including Earth, scientists infer the presence of metallic cores, but these lie unreachably far below the planets’ rocky mantles and crusts. The asteroid Psyche offers a unique window into these building blocks of planet formation and the opportunity to investigate a previously unexplored type of world.
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The Psyche mission “badge” was first developed in 2016, before the mission was selected for NASA’s Discovery Program. Since then, it has been called a “badge” or a “logo” or even...
Building a flight instrument for our asteroid mission Everyone has their story for how they made their way to the Psyche mission. For some of us on the Gamma-Ray and Neutron Spectrometer (GRNS)...
Futuristic electric thrusters emitting a cool blue glow will guide the Psyche spacecraft through deep space to a metal-rich asteroid. Read article
After five years of developing and testing a complex particle detection instrument for NASA’s Psyche mission, the world’s first mission to study a potentially metal-rich asteroid, the Psyche...
The anticipation is building for the Arizona State University-led NASA Psyche mission team, as the countdown clock now displays the mission’s launch as less than 365 days away. This mission,...
As part of NASA’s Discovery Program, the mission to explore a metal-rich asteroid is well on its way to an August 2022 launch. With NASA’s Psyche mission now less than a year from launch,...
Where Are We Now?
A space mission typically has six phases, A-F. The Psyche mission is currently in “Phase D,” which lasts until September 2022. In this phase, the mission is focused on instrument and spacecraft assembly and testing and launch.
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