Psyche Power System Engineer Ben Inouye – Behind the Spacecraft
Meet Ben Inouye, a power system engineer on NASA’s Psyche mission, which will be the first to explore a metal-rich asteroid, also named Psyche. In this video, Inouye, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explains what it was like to build the spacecraft’s power system. Inouye talks about the importance of the power system, as well as his passion for astrophotography.
Whether the asteroid Psyche is the partial core of a planetesimal (a building block 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.
This is the third episode in a weekly, five-part video series called “Behind the Spacecraft.” Each Psyche team member will tell the story of how they came to the mission.
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.
One of the reasons I get up in the morning is to help humanity further its understanding of the unknown.
As human beings, if we're not exploring, then what are we doing?
Hi, I’m Ben Inouye and I help to keep the lights on on the Psyche spacecraft.
The Psyche mission is seeking to understand some of the origins of our own planet, maybe even discover something completely new.
The power team and I engineered, designed, built and tested the Psyche power distribution assembly.
This is what powers the spacecraft.
This is something we expect to be using on missions for a decade or more in the future.
Everything that makes the mission what it is, what makes the spacecraft smart, what allows us to investigate Psyche.
I'm from Hawaii originally — grew up on the Big Island, in Hilo.
My background is marine engineering, so I spent time on ships and learned a lot of the history of exploration of the planet.
I like to tie that into the work I do now because we're still exploring.
It's a metal-rich asteroid that we're going to.
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.
The reason I was drawn to JPL was my hobby in astrophotography.
To be part of a team that was trying to go out there and check it out as well.
The photography and the work that I do are to help people understand and appreciate what is out there.
We formed a really, really critical team and it's really rewarding to see something that you've spent years on as part of a bigger system and a bigger mission.
NASA. A NASA 360 production.