Psyche Inspired: Hoang Nguyen

Institution: University of Maryland

Major: Astronomy

Psyche Inspired Class: 2024-2025

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…

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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.

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Psyche Inspired

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Psyche Inspired