NASA’s Psyche mission to a distant metal asteroid will carry a revolutionary Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) package. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
“Behind the Spacecraft” is a series of short videos that offer glimpses of the people who’ve helped make this upcoming journey to a metal-rich asteroid possible.
What motivates someone to dedicate years to help construct something that will be rocketed into space, never to be seen again on our planet? For the scientists, engineers, and technicians behind NASA’s Psyche mission to a metal-rich asteroid, the answers are wide-ranging. However, they share a common thread: a passion to explore the unknown.
Members of NASA’s Psyche mission – from left, Luis Dominguez, Christina Hernandez, Meena Sreekantamurthy, Julie Li, and Ben Inouye – are featured in a new “Behind the Spacecraft” video series from the agency. Credit: NASA
That inspiration is highlighted in the new “Behind the Spacecraft” video series, in which five members of the Psyche team tell the story of how they ended up on a mission designed to answer questions about the mysterious asteroid Psyche.
Watch a trailer about the series:
Meet some of the engineers who helped build
Meet Christina Hernandez, a flight systems engineer on NASA’s Psyche mission, which will be the first to explore a metal-rich asteroid, also named Psyche. In this video Hernandez, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, talks about getting Psyche ready for launch through the spacecraft’s verification-and-validation phase and her passion for heavy metal music. Credit: NASA
Livestreams and Broadcasts
Produced by NASA 360, the videos will be released weekly on Tuesdays. The first (embedded above) was released on August 22. JPL will host a livestream with Julie Li at 1 p.m. YouTube, Facebook, and X. Questions can be submitted via the livestream chats.
Psyche is set to launch atop a
More About the Mission
Spanning approximately 173 miles (279 kilometers) at its broadest, the asteroid Psyche may be a fragmentary core of a planetesimal (one of the building blocks of a rocky planet), or it could be primordial material that never melted. The primary objective of the Psyche mission is to discern between these possibilities. The mission will further shed light on the mysteries surrounding Earth’s metallic core and the genesis of our solar system. Upon its scheduled arrival at Psyche in 2029, the spacecraft will embark on a 26-month observation period, capturing images and collecting data to enhance our understanding of the asteroid.