Psyche Inspired: Therese Manesia Cook

Institution: University of California, Los Angeles

Major: Physics

Psyche Inspired Class: 2024-2025

Reflections on Psyche Inspired

Reflections on Project 1: Across Psyche

Landscape illustrations of the asteroid Psyche's surface, with the tiny spacecraft in orbit above.

Across Psyche

Therese Manesia Cook

November 22nd, 2024

Major: Physics

Genre/Medium: Digital (Procreate, Photoshop, Heavypaint)

About the work:

The piece “Across Psyche” is a set of three wide landscape illustrations of the asteroid Psyche’s surface, imagined from a perspective showing an expansive display of features. Overlayed above the illustrations are three sweeping arcs, which, upon closer inspection, trail behind the very tiny orbiting spacecraft Psyche. The inspiration for this piece was to convey the size of the asteroid. It is meant to give the viewer a sense of scale: the asteroid Psyche is not just any space rock–in comparison to the spacecraft it’s very big, measuring over a hundred miles across! And, it is bound to have interesting topology and features across this expanse of surface. As no one has seen the surface of the asteroid Psyche yet, the artist hoped to use dynamic shapes and curves as a way of expressing the excitement of the mission, which will discover many new sights across the asteroid. Read more…

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Reflections on Project 2: Psyche’s Wings

An uplifting illustration in bright blues and greens, showing the Psyche spacecraft soaring overhead with a flock of birds in a bright, sunny sky. Both of its large, cross-shaped solar panels spread across the sky like wings. Below it are two tennis players on the court, smiling in awe, with one mirroring Psyche's wingspan with her arms. The sun is shining, and palm trees are swaying in the wind.

Psyche’s Wings

Therese Manesia Cook

March 5th, 2025

Major: Physics

Genre/Medium: Digital Art (Procreate)

About the work:

Continuing on the theme of illustrating scale, my second painting “Psyche’s Wings” uses an imaginary scene on Earth to convey the size of the Psyche spacecraft and its extensive wingspan. It was my first time painting something this large, so it was a challenge and a learning experience for me!

I started out small–when brainstorming this idea with tiny doodles on paper, I knew that I wanted to include characters in the scene to give viewers a relatable sense of scale and emotion. I imagined a character standing beneath the spacecraft, with her arms outstretched to mimic the great stretch of Psyche’s solar panels. Perhaps her friend could be with her, looking up in awe.

Once I had the gist of what I wanted to make, I used VR (Tiltbrush on Quest) to block out the composition with very simple stick figures. This allowed me to easily adjust the placement/posing of the characters and spacecraft, then snap test “photos” of them using the in-app camera, all with real perspective in 3D. I was looking for something striking, and once I found a view I liked, I drew it out more carefully on a large canvas in Photoshop. At this stage, I referenced the available engineering 3D model of Psyche as well as cleanroom photos from NASA’s online archive while drawing the spacecraft. Read more…

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Reflections on Project 3: Chibi Psyche

A rounded patch design featuring a cute, mini cartoon version of the spacecraft. The spacecraft has a bright silver circular face with expressive eyes, solar panels as its wings, and instrument booms as arms. Set against the asteroid and a starry dark background, with text reading 'JOURNEY to a METAL WORLD' and 'MISSION TO PSYCHE' along the edge. A blue thruster trail flows behind the spacecraft.

Chibi Psyche

Therese Manesia Cook

Major: Physics

Genre/Medium: Digital/Procreate

About the work:

My third project, called “Chibi Psyche”, imagines the spacecraft as a mini cartoon character. When designing this, I drew inspiration from the very cute mascot characters that the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has created for its space missions.

I did my best to include the most important spacecraft components I learned about in the design. It was amusing to squish the huge set of cross-shaped solar panels way down into tiny chibi-form. I thought that the big X-band radio antenna on the spacecraft would be perfect to act as Chibi Psyche’s face, and that the two booms beneath it (with Psyche’s spectrometer and magnetometer instruments) could be her arms. The two dots below her chin represent the multispectral imager, and the big gold-and-silver tube on top is Psyche’s DSOC flight laser transceiver. (Also, the numerous little rectangles patterning the sides of the spacecraft–as I finally found out–are things called louver boxes, which help keep Psyche the right temperature as it travels further from the sun.) Read more…

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