Behind the Spacecraft: Psyche – Journey to a Metal World (Teaser Trailer)
Meet some of the engineers contributing to NASA’s Psyche mission, which will be the first to explore a metal-rich asteroid, also named Psyche. This trailer previews the team members profiled in the series whose work will help scientists understand the story behind this unusual asteroid.
Whether the asteroid Psyche is the partial core of a planetesimal (one of the building blocks of the rocky planets in our solar system) or primordial material that never melted, scientists expect the mission to help answer fundamental questions about Earth’s own metal core and the formation of our solar system.
Each week,this five-part video series will introduce a Psyche team member who will tell the story of how they came to join the mission: Christina Hernandez, Meena Sreekantamurthy, Ben Inouye, Julie Li, and Luis Dominguez. Join us on this channel on Sept. 13 and 20 for livestreamed Q&As with team members as well.
Psyche’s launch period opens Oct. 5, 2023. The spacecraft will begin orbiting the asteroid Psyche in 2029.
Learn all about our first-of-its-kind #MissionToPsyche at: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/psyche
Credit: NASA
Produced by: NASA 360 Productions
Transcript
Behind The Spacecraft: Psyche — Journey to a Metal World.
At the end of the day, it's always a philosophical question, right, of, "Why are we in this universe?"
Space just inspires everyone of different backgrounds, different nationalities.
So I think it gives, in a sense, kind of hope for humanity.
As human beings, if we're not exploring, then what are we doing?
It's extremely difficult science and technology, but it's possible.
My name is Luis Dominguez, and my job is to assemble all the different components for the Psyche spacecraft.
I'm Julie Li, and my job is to propel the Psyche spacecraft to a metal-rich asteroid.
Hi, I'm Ben Inouye.
My name is Christina Hernandez.
My name is Meena Sreekantamurthy.
And I'm making sure that we built a spacecraft that's ready to explore a metal world.
What's really exciting about Psyche being a metal-rich asteroid is we haven't yet had the opportunity to explore a planetary core, and that's what we actually think happened to Psyche.
There is a theory that this metallic asteroid may be very closely related to the materials that made up the core of our own planet.
It could have been the remnant of a planetary collision billions of years ago in our solar system.
All that's left is the metal-rich remnant.
Scientists hypothesize that by studying this asteroid, we think that could give us a lot more insights on what our actual planet is doing.
So this is the Psyche spacecraft.
We're basically looking at a spaceship that's going into space.
And welcome to High Bay 2 at JPL.
We pulled together all the different components that everyone's building.
And so this is where we control the Psyche spacecraft and dictate how things happen on the floor.
This is where I work on the low voltage power supply for the Psyche mission.
It's pretty exciting to watch something that we built with our own hands — to see something that you've spent years on —launch and in a couple of years, reach Psyche and send back science data.
We formed a really, really critical team.
The diversity of skill sets that each one of us in our community brought to the team to make this kind of impact to society is what inspires me to be an engineer in the space exploration sector. NASA. A NASA 360 production.