Psyche Inspired: Hoang Nguyen

Hoang Nguyen Headshot

Institution: University of Maryland

Major: Astronomy

Psyche Inspired Class: 2024-2025

Reflections on Psyche Inspired

Reflections on Project 1: Anniversary

The Psyche spacecraft is portrayed as an android with human features, wearing a paper crown and a serene expression. It sits in a small, minimal room draped in thick cloth, and lifts the obscuring cloth from models of Earth and Mars. On a dresser is a model Falcon Heavy in a bottle, and a framed picture of Earth from orbit. A picture of the asteroid hangs from the wall with a festive garland.

Anniversary

Hoang Nguyen

November 25th, 2024

Major: Astronomy

Genre/Medium: digital illustration

About the work:

Remembering the affection that many people had for the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, I wondered if, by depicting Psyche in a humanoid form, I could evoke sympathy for a spacecraft. It happened to be near the first anniversary of Psyche’s launch, so in my piece I’ve thrown a somewhat lonely little birthday party for the beloved child.

It’s my instinct to lean Baroque, but I felt it was necessary for the scene to be set solidly in the 21st century. These sort of conflicting ideas were hard to resolve, and I think my attempt to do that is what pushed the image in the direction of, say, a still life in a book of hide-and-seek puzzles you might’ve had as a kid, or maybe a secret room in a dream you’ve had and since forgotten. Read more…

View Full Project

Reflections on Project 2: The Artifact

An android reaches for a metal skeleton whose head is obscured by cloth. This portrait is contained in a decorative frame which depicts, counterclockwise from the bottom, the asteroid Psyche, the terrestrial planets, a sheep made of gears and cogs, the Moon, a sheep made of flesh and bones, and the cores of the terrestrial planets.

The Artifact

Hoang Nguyen

January 27th, 2025

Major: Astronomy

Genre/Medium: Digital Illustration

About the work:

I continue drawing human analogies to the mission, which to me makes the whole thing feel more personal. Here I portray both the asteroid and the spacecraft that shares its name as humanoids, reusing the design from my first piece. The asteroid is recognizable from the positioning of the skeleton, which recalls Psyche’s pose in a well-known depiction of the goddess being taken away by Eros. Likely formed from the frequent collisions in the early solar system, it is reduced to this unknowable metal core.

The mechanical sheep jumping over the frame reminds us that this isn’t a scene that has happened yet, just the android’s dream; we’re not sure yet if Psyche really is part of the core of a planetesimal or if it is differentiated at all. We follow the counterclockwise motion of the two sheep as if turning back time, taking us from the complete terrestrial planets to the mechanical sheep, like the spacecraft leaving the inner solar system, to following the organic sheep, as if chasing the asteroid of the same name, to the cores of the terrestrial planets—what the asteroid could have become and what we might learn about the planets from it.

The Moon at the top of the frame, another witness of the chaotic early solar system, mirrors the eyes of the android and watches over this scene, a portrait of someone who is now forgotten to us.

View Full Project

Reflections on Project 3: Childhood of the Planets

In an empty, grassy plain, a personified Earth and Falcon Heavy wave goodbye to the Psyche spacecraft, represented as an android, who stands in the distance with Mars. Farther still, a bridge of clouds connects the plain to where the asteroid hangs in the sky among a field of stars.

Childhood of the planets

Hoang Nguyen

Major: Astronomy

Genre/Medium: digital illustration

About the work:

Now having established a visual code to convey hidden meaning, I invert the situation from The Artifact—Psyche the spacecraft recedes back to an observer role, and the planets take center stage. After all, Psyche’s dream is the main focus of the image: the planets, still forming in the accretion disk, the little planetary nursery, run counterclockwise around the Sun—we remember the counterclockwise motion in The Artifact, turning back the clock and looking at a scene from the solar system’s history.

The spacecraft watches this scene from beyond a haze of surreality. I wanted to paint almost as if Psyche were seeing it by candlelight, which is how Baroque paintings would have been viewed in their time. In my mind, it gives a sense of closeness with the planets’ history.
Some familiar figures make themselves known in each corner of the image: Psyche the spacecraft facing the Sun, the android I’ve become so used to drawing, the inner solar system seen on a glance back, and a mysterious veiled someone who has appeared before, in a different form, and who reappears here to smile on the scene, the unveiling of history.
Psyche might have been a part of a planetesimal, a small body that could grow to become a planet. If that were the case, what could we learn about the childhood of the planets? This is the idea around which I built the piece, but at the bottom of the frame, a sleeping lamb reminds us that this is still only a theory, while at the top, the image of the asteroid reminds us of the destination. In this scene glowing gold with a promise of discovery, we continue to dream of what’s to come.

View Full Project

Reflections on Project 4: Fare Thee Well

In an empty, grassy plain, a personified Earth and Falcon Heavy wave goodbye to the Psyche spacecraft, represented as an android, who stands in the distance with Mars. Farther still, a bridge of clouds connects the plain to where the asteroid hangs in the sky among a field of stars.

Fare Thee Well

Hoang Nguyen

Major: Astronomy

Genre/Medium: digital illustration

About the work:

As this series comes to a close, I wanted to end with a farewell to the spacecraft. I’ve cast off the gold frames from The Artifact and Childhood of the Planets because we’re returning to the real world, a scene from the relatively near future at the moment that the spacecraft will swing by Mars before going the rest of the way alone.
The ship in a bottle from Anniversary makes an appearance. Here I wanted Psyche and the Falcon to be somewhat cherubic in appearance despite their mechanical bodies, as if they were Earth’s own beloved children heading off on a trip. I elected not to show Earth’s or Mars’s faces in detail—you can’t pick them out of the bunch in Childhood of the Planets either, so I decided to continue with the sense of mystery surrounding the planets we’re most familiar with. Flower petals fall out of Earth’s sleeve, the planet that begets life, and Mars is clothed in a dusty veil.
The suspended stars from Childhood of the Planets return, but now the terrestrial planets are hidden among them—between Earth and Mars, there seems to be something twinkling like a traveler passing by worlds. Over in the distance, and over a bridge of clouds like a lamb’s wool, Psyche the asteroid, which in this series has appeared only in pictures within pictures, hangs impossibly large in the sky, the destination and the culmination of all the work that’s been done so far.

View Full Project

The Psyche badge with no words on it.

Psyche Inspired

Learn more about the Psyche Inspired program and view other works

/

Psyche Inspired