November 5, 2018

Psyche’s Narratives: A Student Intern’s Literary View of the Psyche Mission

Image: From “Eros and Psyche: A Fairy-Tale of Ancient Greece” (Retold After Apuleius by Paul Carus (1900))

When I was a little girl, I liked to read a book full of illustrated Greek myths. There were stories of thrilling heroes and grotesque monsters, of epic quests and tragic failures. Origin stories, comedies, tragedies, and cautionary tales — I ate them up. Over and over I read the tale of how Perseus slew the Gorgon Medusa and then rescued Andromeda from a sea serpent. I had a soft spot for the myth of how Dionysus transformed a group of pirates into dolphins. I knew each one of Hercules’ twelve Labors.

I am not the only one whose imagination has been captivated by Greek and Roman myths. So much of Western culture has been built on these stories — characters and scenes have been imagined and reimagined by artists, sculptors, and writers for several centuries. These stories have even influenced our language; we have myths to thank for words like “narcissism,” “atlas,” and “herculean.”

There are obvious reasons why these myths are so influential. For one thing, they have been stitched into the sky itself: We still call many constellations by the names given to them by the Greeks and Romans. The Roman gods Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn found permanent namesakes in our nearest planetary neighbors. Even now, centuries after the fall of these ancient civilizations, we continue to draw on myth when naming other planets and space objects.

So, about a year ago, when I learned about an asteroid discovered in the mid-nineteenth century named (16) Psyche, I didn’t think much of it. Certainly I knew the reference: In Greek, psyche means “soul” or “mind,” and it is the name of a beautiful, naïve girl from “The Myth of Eros and Psyche.”

In this story, Eros (a.k.a. Cupid or Amor), the god of desire, falls in love with the mortal Psyche. She becomes the god’s bride, but she is forbidden from learning her husband’s identity. Overcome by curiosity, she breaks the rules and looks upon his face. Eros flees. Psyche pursues him and endures arduous trials and abuse from Eros’ mother, Aphrodite (a.k.a. Venus). When Eros at last brings Psyche to his side, he gives her ambrosia, granting her immortality and completing her transformation into the immortal goddess of the soul. (TED-Ed has a short video that gives a more complete summary of this myth.)

The story, originally found in Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, is an allegory: Passion and adversity purify the soul and enable it to enjoy true happiness. For those curious to know more and to get a taste of the original 2nd-Century novel, a translation of the relevant excerpt is available online.

Over the centuries, this narrative of Psyche’s union with the god of love has been studied and retold in various ways. Psyche is also the subject of many statues and paintings, in which she is sometimes identifiable by a pair of butterfly wings — butterflies being the symbol for the soul in several ancient cultures. In fact, the astronomers’ shorthand symbol for the asteroid (16) Psyche is a simple star rising above a semicircle, meant to represent a butterfly wing.

I was pleased that another favorite story of mine had found a home in the stars. But it never occurred to me that (16) Psyche’s narrative might in any way match that of its namesake.

When Annibale de Gasparis discovered the sixteenth asteroid way back in 1852, nobody knew just how fitting it was to name it after the goddess Psyche. It wasn’t until recent years that we gathered enough evidence to learn that this asteroid is primarily composed of metal. Specifically, iron-nickel. We generally find this kind of metal deep within terrestrial (rocky) planets: the inner cores of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are made of iron-nickel alloys.

This suggests that (16) Psyche could actually be the exposed core of a protoplanet from an early stage of our solar system. We now suspect that violent collisions common during this period ripped away the outer shell of this young planet, leaving only the mostly metallic core — what we now call (16) Psyche — to drift in the main asteroid belt around the Sun.

With this new understanding comes a new opportunity for discovery: One of the primary objectives of the Psyche mission is to determine whether the asteroid is indeed an early planetary core. If it is, we will be able to learn more about the interiors of terrestrial planets and the building blocks of the solar system.

When I heard all this, I couldn’t help thinking that (16) Psyche is like the soul of an early planet, making the asteroid’s name marvelously fitting. I find it sweetly poetic to imagine the inner core of a planet as its soul — the deepest interior, untouchable, unreachable, and yet integral to a planet’s existence.

We cannot observe our own planet’s core directly: Drills cannot tunnel far enough, and we have no equipment able to withstand the extreme temperatures found deep inside the Earth. But (16) Psyche is not enclosed within a planet. Having endured frightening collisions, it now drifts free of its “mortal body” and presents a window into the mysterious heart of terra firma. Quite literally, we are heading upward with the hope of getting a glimpse of what lies beneath our feet.

These images utterly captivated my imagination. The narrative parallels were too intriguing, too elegant to keep to myself, so they spilled out in one way or another.

Over winter break, I set up an easel in my parents’ living room and dug out my paintbrushes and oils to capture my vision of (16) Psyche adorned with shining golden butterfly wings. When family, friends, and strangers saw me working, I would tell them about the goddess, the asteroid, and the mission. I wanted everyone to know (16) Psyche’s story.

I have always been fascinated by the power that stories have to build connections. Narratives stitch people, objects, and events together into the fabric of human experience. It’s because of this that now, as a student intern, I continue to unearth the stories that lie concealed under the technical aspects of the Psyche mission — each one a facet of the soul of discovery and teamwork that defines this undertaking.

This story is not finished, however. The Psyche mission spacecraft has a long way to go before it can begin sending us information about this asteroid. Its target launch date is 2022, as it will take several years for the craft to be manufactured and tested here on Earth. Beyond that, it will take the spacecraft about three and a half years to reach the asteroid. Once it arrives in (16) Psyche’s orbit, probably in 2026, it will spend a little under two years making observations before its mission is complete.

Like its namesake, the Psyche mission has a long journey ahead of it. We can hope that it, too, will have a happy ending.