#psyche mission

[brickett6]

Mars as seen from the psyche probe during it's flyby of the red planet on may 15 2026

(original raw images by NASA, color from me stacking the filter wheel raws)

[deep-space-netwerk]

So I wanna tell y'all about something very near and dear to my heart.

This is the Psyche asteroid, or, at least an artist's representation - we don't know what it actually looks like yet, but this is a fair enough guess. It's a roughly 200 mile wide asteroid in the asteroid belt, and it's made almost entirely out of metal. Its composition makes it unique; it’s the only large metallic body we know of in the entire solar system.

We think it might be the core of what used to be a planet.

When solar systems form, they start out as disks made of interstellar gas and dust, called protoplanetary disks. Here's a picture of HL Tauri, one of the best images of a protoplanetary disk we have.

That dust globs together into larger and larger pieces, and eventually forms hundreds of "planetesimals", which are rocky bodies about a kilometer across. Planetesimals had very erratic orbits compared to the modern planets - the dust of the protoplanetary disk caused friction and drag, which threw them off course.

They frequently collided with each other, and either broke apart or stuck together and grew even larger. Arrokoth is actually a leftover planetesimal, a time capsule from the early solar system, and we were able to visit it wayyy out in the Kuiper belt with the New Horizons probe!

Once planetesimals get to be about the size of the moon, we call them "protoplanets". Protoplanets were fundamentally different from their planetesimal siblings - we believe they were differentiated. When an object in space gets big enough, a combination of radioactive decay, impacts, and gravitational pressure causes them to heat up and melt. Denser materials like iron and nickel sink towards their centers, while the lighter materials rise to the surface. The differentiation process is why Earth's core is made of iron, while the surface is primarily rock.

While protoplanet orbits were much more stable than those of planetesimals, they still eventually collided with each other until everything settled into the planets we see today (though gas giants had a few extra steps - that's a different post!).

We think the Psyche asteroid was a protoplanet, well on its way to becoming a bona fide planet, when an impact struck it hard enough to strip away its rocky layers, leaving behind the dense, metallic core - like in this illustration.

More and more, we think  the properties of a planet's core are fundamental to its long-term evolution. Venus, Earth, and Mars are all roughly the same size and roughly the same distance from the sun, cosmically speaking, yet they're so different! Venus has hell death clouds, Earth is home, and Mars is dry and dead - why?

The Psyche asteroid gives us the unique opportunity to actually observe a planetary core directly - it's much harder to dig to the center of a planet than it is to go to space, so that's exactly what we're going to do!

On Thursday October 12th at 10:16am Eastern, the Psyche spacecraft will launch and begin its journey to the asteroid belt! You can watch at https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv/!

I've been a part of this mission for over four years now, and I can't speak highly enough of the team that made it happen through all of the ups and downs. Good luck out there, buddy. We're all rooting for you :')

[frogshunnedshadows]

Good news: We're still exploring space.

[mindblowingscience]

Psyche spacecraft launched to mysterious and rare metal asteroid in first mission of its kind

NASA's Psyche spacecraft rocketed away Friday on a six-year journey to a rare metal-covered asteroid.

NASA's Psyche spacecraft rocketed away Friday on a six-year journey to a rare metal-covered asteroid. Most asteroids tend to be rocky or icy, and this is the first exploration of a metal world. Scientists believe it may be the battered remains of an early planet's core, and could shed light on the inaccessible centers of Earth and other rocky planets. SpaceX launched the spacecraft into an overcast midmorning sky from NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Named for the asteroid it's chasing, Psyche should reach the huge, potato-shaped object in 2029.

Continue Reading.

[awake-for-a-lifetime]

psyche encapsulated it its (reused!!!) payload fairing ahead of launch on the 12th at 10:16 AM eastern time

I am so hyped for this mission!!!!!!!! it’ll explore an asteroid (also called psyche) that is, at least we think, essentially a bare planetary core, allowing us to know more about how planets form in general

[siryl]

I just ran across another Psyche Mission illustration by Peter Rubin.  I posted the other illustrations here.

[the-autumnal-void]

went searching through the psyche probe images (link under the cut) and one struck me as Absolutely Needing to become Bill, so

took way longer than i thought it would to get the lines to match the existing noise somewhat, BUT the image exists now so the idea is out of my head, therefore we ball.

also an edit with just the eye added, cause methinks it looks cool, plus the plain original* image

*when u download them directly, they’re cleaner, but by downloading the thumbnail images you get the noise/interference. Don’t know why that is but it’s technically from the messier thumbnail version and not the actual original

aaand here's the link in case anyone wants to check out the pics themself (be warned there are Many near-blank ones to sift through)

NASA’s real-time science encyclopedia of deep space exploration. Our scientists and far-ranging robots explore the wild frontiers of our sol

[ourwitching]

6 min readPreparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) NASA’s Psyche spacec...