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Paper No. 238-12
Presentation Time: 11:00 AM
THE NASA PSYCHE MISSION: A JOURNEY TO A METAL WORLD
On Jan. 4, 2017 NASA announced that Arizona State University would lead the development of one of the next Discovery-class robotic planetary missions, to visit the metallic asteroid, (16) Psyche. Our mission, named after the target asteroid, will send the first spacecraft to encounter, and orbit, an M-class asteroid. The mission design is based on NASA’s successful Dawn mission at asteroid (4) Vesta and dwarf planet (1) Ceres, and uses instruments with a strong heritage from past missions. The driving question of the Psyche mission is: “Is (16) Psyche the core of an asteroid parent body?” Our science objectives are: 1) Is Psyche a core, or did it never undergo melting? 2) What are the relative ages of features and units on its surface? 3) Do small metal bodies incorporate light elements expected to be inside Earth’s high-pressure core? 4) Did Psyche form under more oxidizing or more reducing conditions than Earth’s core? and 5) What is the unique topography of this metal world? Psyche will launch in Aug. 2022 and will enter orbit of (16) Psyche in Jan. 2026 for a 21-month nominal mission. Psyche will study the surface using a pair of multispectral imagers (clear filter & 7 color filters, for surface morphology, stereo topography, and mineralogical assessment), a gamma-ray & neutron spectrometer (for elemental abundances), dual fluxgate magnetometers (to search for a remanent magnetic field), a gravity investigation using tracking of the spacecraft’s radio signal, and a deep space optical communication instrument as a technology demonstration. Psyche will operate in four consecutively lower orbits, each optimized to obtain data to accomplish our science objectives. Our spacecraft will be solar powered and will utilize both Hall thrusters (solar electric propulsion) and cold gas thrusters. Our mission is a collaboration of ASU, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Maxar Technologies’ SSL, and several other institutions. This presentation discusses details of our mission.