Psyche is both the name of an asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter — and the name of a NASA space mission to visit that asteroid. The Psyche spacecraft is targeted to travel to the asteroid using solar-electric (low-thrust) propulsion, following a Mars flyby and gravity-assist. After arrival, the mission plan calls for mapping the asteroid and studying its properties. Once the spacecraft arrives at the asteroid, plans call for it to perform science operations from four staging orbits, which become successively closer.
What gives asteroid Psyche great scientific interest is that it is likely rich in metal. It may consist largely of metal from the core of a planetesimal, one of the building blocks of the Sun’s planetary system. At Psyche scientists will explore, for the first time ever, a world made not of rock or ice, but rich in metal.
Lindy Elkins-Tanton, director of UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, is the mission’s principal investigator. Mission partners include Arizona State University, the University of Arizona, Yale University, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Southwest Research Institute, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Smithsonian Institution, Technical University of Denmark, University of California Los Angeles, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur and others.
