[Music] [Music] [Music] welcome to another episode of NASA science live an opportunity for you to interact with NASA experts and have your questions answered in real time I'm your host Raquel viena and today we are going to talk about NASA's psyche Mission if you have questions throughout Today's show you can send them in using the hashtag asknasa on social media or drop them into the comment box wherever you're watching the psyche spacecraft is preparing to launch October 5th to explore a uniqu
e asteroid also called psyche orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter scientists believe the asteroid May consist of a significant amount of nickel iron metal mixed with rock it could contain metal from the core of what is called a planetesimal which is a building block of an early rocky planet psyche may offer a unique window into the violent history of collisions that created a terrestrial planets like Earth I am joined today by two psyche Mission experts who are going to help answer your qu
estions about the journey to a metal Rich asteroid Dr Carver bearon is a psyche postto at Arizona State University Welcome Carver thank you so much for having me and Dr Rona Oran is the psyche magnetometry investigation scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology wel welcome Rona excited to be here thank you both so much for joining us to chat about this Mission now I have a question for you both to start this is the first time we are sending a spacecraft to ca metal Rich asteroid what do
you think we will discover about psyche we'll start with Carver yeah I mean one of the exciting things about going to a type of world we've never been to before is there's so many new types of things we might find that we've never seen for example some people talked about the possibility of maybe there's iron volcanism iron volcano s psyche and we just don't know if they're there or not until we arrive it's exciting to see what we might find uh Rona what about you yes psyche is indeed a very un
ique object that we've never explored before and there are many open questions the more we look at it through telescopes the less we know what kind of body it is it less it fits into our mold of what planets uh type of planetary bodies are made of and uniquely to the magnetometry investigation that I'm involved in is that psyche presents the possibility to be the first ever detection of a magnetized asteroid so all asteroid we visited before were not magnetized and made of rock because psyche is
metal Rich it may actually be magnetized W now speaking of metal Rich uh Carver if we haven't visited this asteroid yet how do we know that it may be the exposed nickel iron core of an early planetary building block What observations have contributed to this Theory yeah there's two big ones one is we can look at the mass or the density of psyche that tells us something about what it's composed of and the other is looking at how light in particular radio waves bounce off the surface that indicat
es that there's definitely some metal at the surface we don't know how much is metal there might still be some rock mixed in but there's definitely some amount of metal uh at the surface of psyche and Rona what could studying psyche teach us about Earth's Own metal core yes so uh our core is also made made of metal and we assume it has a lot of heavy metals in it but it's so deep inside the earth that we actually have no chance of ever visiting it so while we do know that we have a core we don't
know exactly how it formed when it Formed how it generated the magnetic field that we have have that protects us from the space environment and so visiting s would actually be the first time humans and probably the only time humans will ever have a chance to visit the core wow well we have some questions coming in from viewers watching outline remember you can submit using the hashtag asknasa or by posting them in the comments section wherever you are watching today so let's get to some of thes
e questions our first is from Su Mala I hope I'm saying that right on Facebook who wants to know what caused the asteroid belt and what broke up the planets Carver do you want to start with that sure um so the asteroid belt in one sense is kind of the leftover materials from planet formation so you have a bunch of material that as the solar system was forming you lots of small bits of rock and ice and mostly Rock and the inner solar system coming together to build the planets in between Mars and
Jupiter we have these leftover bits some of them formed into larger plant asmal that then would have impacted into each other scattering apart breaking into smaller pieces and it could be that psyche was one of those larger plant tmals that had a big impact like this and so it's just the core that's left over for us to go visit now that's a great answer now Kon X asks once you get an accurate size of psyche do you think you'll be able to have a good estimate of the size of the parent body Rona
Carver I don't know which one you wants to take that question uh that's an excellent question it's very very creative question so yeah it's so what we can tell when you see a rock exposed in space you can tell from the minology how much pressure it sustained and what kind of temperatures it was created in so you can kind of estimate what pressured it to be that way and what pressured it is the overlaying layers of the planet like we have a man and a and a crust so if you look at the Rocks you ca
n actually estimate were they created under a lot of pressure If so they were created in a bigger planet and Roo we have another question coming in for you ravan X asks is psyche a remnant of the core of a protoplanet um I think the definition of a protoplanet on planetesimal are kind of like it depends on how you look at it so it's basically if it is a remnant of a core it is a remnant of a body that grew and grew and grew and started forming a core but then something happened to it that stoppe
d it and create and and stopped it from being an actual Planet like the other planets that we see that are nice and round and have as soil Etc uh so it is a remnant of something that was starting to become a planet if it is ah now Carver would you like to add to that um uh no I think that was a great answer perfect now let's move on to Juan Pablo Hernandez on YouTube who asks how will the mission show us what psyche looks like and will we take samples from it Carver I can hand that one to you ye
ah so the psyche uh mission is not going to take samples of the surface and instead we're going to use a host of different instruments to look at it while we're orbiting the asteroid so we have two cameras that are going to take images in different wavelengths we have a Gamay Neutron spectrometer it's going to give us more information about what that surface is made out of and we're going to do gravity science as well with the main antenna uh essentially looking at exactly how mass is distribute
d across the surface of the satellite great thank you and you know people are tuning in live right now and we've touched on this a little bit but for those of you just joining us let's answer ananda's question how did you conclude that this asteroid may give Clues to rocky planet formation I don't know Rona would you like to take that one uh sure so uh 99% of the asteroid that we see in the on the asteroid belt are made of rock and the um all the asteroids that we visited are made of rock and ac
tually metallic asteroids something that we call mclass asteroids is something that we haven't really seen we see them as really really little dots we haven't visited them by spacecraft but as Carver mentioned before they do reflect the light in a certain way they do reflect electromagnetic radiation in a certain way that suggests that they are shiny they're like a metal so we know that they consist of a lot of metal in there we don't know exactly how it looks like is it a big chunk of metal is
it metal mixed with rock uh but from that we know that they are very special because most of the material in the universe is not iron and is not nickel so if you have a big clump of that material all touched together it's most likely was created inside the planet where everything sank to the bottom and in order for that to happen that is planet formation where you have a lot of material coming together and forming a core and then a mental and a crust and we've been talking about Metal but rogerv
ille T asks what kind of minerals is NASA expecting in psyche can we expand on that as well Rona uh I may defer this to Carver more um all right Carver yeah um I'm not sure exactly what minerals we're going to find um in part because we don't know exactly what that Rocky component of psyche is at this point and that's one of the things that we want to learn when we get there and use uh our Imaging cameras and spectrometers that bring W great answer and Juan Pablo Hernandez on YouTube wants to kn
ow how long will the mission be and will the probe tell us how psyche was formed do you want to take that one again sure um so it's going to take the mission about five years to get there so the spacecraft is going to arrive at psyche in August of 2029 and we're going to spend a little over two years in orbit a different level slowly getting closer and closer to the asteroid learning more as we descend uh and what was the second half of that question uh how will it tell us how psyche was formed
ah um a lot of that's going to be in really learning what psyche is as we said you know there's right now there's so much we don't know we know there's some amount of metal but knowing what how much metal how much rock is there how are they mixed together or not on the surface and what's the details of that chemistry that's what we're those are the clues we're going to use to try and figure out how psyche formed great now Rona Carver we have a bit of a longer question coming in so I'm going to n
eed your help deciding who's going to answer this one for wins on X asks how do gashes elements settled during planetary formation influencing planetary structures and phenomena how does the distribution contribute to diverse planetary characteristics across our solar system okay so we when we look at the solar systems being born we actually don't just see gas we see gas and dust and that's really important when you have those tiny grains of dust and at some point in our solar system we know tha
t around 4.6 billion years ago we formed what we call the first solids so if you look at the universe when it creates Stars it's only gas but at some point our solar system started creating little solids that you can still see in meteorites that fall to the Earth that nothing touched them you can actually see them just as they were and from that point on you have you can think about it that a lot of grains just like sticking together have billions of years to do that uh and then slowly you start
to form the planet so depending on what kind of dust mixture you start with that would H determine what kind of planet you're going to form so if you have almost no metal around you will have less metal in the in those grains that you would create um and we also see that our planets really really change where you sample if you look at the planet that are close to the Sun like Venus Mercury and Mars and us they are terrestrial planets while the planets that are further out from the Sun have are
gases giant like Jupiter and Saturn so all of those things really have this diversity of planets as you mentioned and it really depends where you were formed when you were formed what was around you when you were formed thank you Rona and I have another question for you uh ding panda on YouTube is asking being a metal world with Magnetic proper Properties or possible magnetic properties what possible interferences are being planned for already oh excellent question okay so we are really really e
xcited of about the opportunity to discover that psyche is magnetized we don't know if it is so we really planned the mission the instruments we worked with the engineering teams and everyone to really make sure that if there is a magnetic field in those rocks we would be able to measure it uh so we are planning on uh actually detecting the disturbances as small as they can be that we can actually detect them on the other hand there is a possibility that psyche would be very magnetized and then
it would form a cocoon around it what we call the magnetosphere which is basically the area around the body that is shielded by its own magnetic field and shields out all this space radiation and space particles um so the old spacecraft are actually built uh with shielding on their um instruments and on their Hall in order to protect them from space radiation and from external magnetic fields uh so we've already made sure that if psyche is magnetized we're not going to damage the spacecraft I th
ank you you both have been offering some great Insight so far we have some more questions to get to Lis PVE on YouTube asks when is the mission launching and on what rocket is it going to be launched on Carver do you have an idea yeah so the planet a launch on October 5th and it's going to be launching on a SpaceX Falcon heavy rocket perfect thank you and Jacob on Facebook asks what methods are used to determine the density of such a cosmological body like psyche uh Rona Carver Rona do you want
to take that uh so mostly how we determine the the density of bodies that we see from very far away is actually to determine their size and their mass and that gives you the density and the size you can kind of get from Radio observations and cover may want to add to that uh later and the density you can you can the mass you can determine by how this body interacts with other bodies next to it so usually we just look at this body and how it behaves with respect to other bodies using telescopes f
or a very long time this is how we do it for planets inside and outside of the solar system and the same for asteroids cover may want to take more about the sure um one of the cool things about what we've been able to do with psyche is the aoso telescope was actually used to send radar signals at psyche and listen to how they bounced back and from that we actually have a pretty good idea of the size and shape of psyche at least at a broad scale right now and that helps with figuring out the size
for that density estimate like Rona was talking about perfect thank you so we have another question from Le pavl wants to know what in instruments are on board the spacecraft Rona would you like to try I I sorry I didn't hear you oh I was saying Rona would you like to take that one yeah yeah so we have three main science instruments it's a magnetometer that measures the magnetic field it would be measuring the magnetic field around psyche and from psyche hopefully uh we have the um the imager t
hat will be Imaging the surface of psyche characterize it Sur surface characterized craters any kind of structures on it geological structures and we have the gamma ray Newton spectrometer which is basically a detector that picks up uh particles that spatter off of the surface uh because of cosmic radiation and that helps us determine the chemical uh content of the minerals that were spattered from so how much iron how much nickle the surface has uh and putting all of this together with the grav
ity uh experiment that we'll be using the hyen antennas and the radio um as Carver mentioned before for those of you that didn't hear at the beginning uh putting it all together we would be able to uh build the history of psyche you both are doing such a fantastic job answering all these questions I have one for you Carver hydronic on YouTube asks why are some asteroids made of metal but others are not you know that's a great question and it's part of why we're going to Psy uh this will be the f
irst metal Rich asteroid that we've gone and visited and explored in this way and that's one of our questions is how did it get to be this way um we have some ideas some hypotheses going in like maybe it was part of a larger planet tesmo where this was the core and then there was some sort of Rocky mantle on top that got stripped off in a giant Collision a giant impact um but we don't know if that's what happened or not and that's why we're going there is to find out and we have one more questio
n for you from Iceland animations on YouTube wants to know how big is the psych asteroid uh its radiuses are 250 kilometers so it's about the size of the state of Massachusetts I was gonna ask for like another reference point for people perfect thank you so much Rona now the questions are fantastic please keep sending them in it's incredible yeah it's incredible to see that we're going to visit this mysterious metal Rich asteroid with psyche now let's take a little bit of a deeper dive into the
mission 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 a not exploring then what are we doing it's extremely difficult Science and Technology but it's possible my name is leis Dominguez and my job is to assemble all the different components for the psyche spacecraft I'm Julie Lee and my job is to pr
opel the psyche spacecraft to a metal Rich asteroid hi I'm Beno my name is Christina Hernandez my name is minina Shri morti 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 can give us a lot more insights on what our actual planet is doing so this is is the psyche spacecraft we're basically looking at a spaceship that's going into space and welcome to high bit 2 at JPL we pulled together all the different components that everyone's buildi
ng and so this is where we control the psy spacecraft they dictate how things happen on the floor this is where I work on the low voltage power supply for the psy Mission it's pretty exciting to watch something that we build 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 did make this k
ind of impact to society is what inspires me to be an engineer in the space exploration sector seeing that video makes me think about how many individuals are required to achieve a mission like this now I have a question for both of you in what way has you your experience with the psyche team been the most meaningful Carver would you like to start sure yeah so I joined the psych team relatively recently a few years ago so I was joining in the midst of Co and everything else that was happening an
d it was really wonderful to just how welcoming the team was to me as I was joining on even though there was all the chaos going on and everyone's in the middle of trying to get the spacecraft ready for launch there's still so much excitement so much passion about uh all the wonderful science that we're going to be doing it's great to hear what about you Rona uh it's been uh such an Inspire inspiring and exciting experience uh really seeing this team come together uh I joined in 2017 and really
seeing the the team build and evolve and add people and then go into Co and then come back and somehow we managed to actually build the spacecraft and it's really like the combination of talking to people people and working with people that have so much different experiences uh than you and the first time going to see the psyche spacecraft when it was being built when it still at their Bare Bones and then seeing it again at JPL almost ready for launch before being delivered to the cape it was re
ally exciting to see it all actually come to life yeah to see the physical embodiment of what you've been working so hard on yes absolutely all right thank you now let's get to more of your questions online and please keep sending them in using the hash asknasa or put them in the chat wherever you are watching today so we have Ron Carlson on YouTube who asks will psyche's magnetic field be measured and mapped presumably it's very cold and we'll have some magnetization locked in from at least its
collisions Rona that sounds like a question for you amazing question uh yes so we will be measuring the magnetic field uh we have designed with our all of our collaborators at Nasa and Denmark Technical University and here at MIT uh two magnetometers two semicircular objects that measure the magnetic field very very delicately and tried to tell if uh the body that you see here on the video is actually Harbor some magnetic field that's locked into the Rocks so these rocks formed in that inside m
agnetic field H when they were in a molten State and then they slowly froze and became solid locking in that magnetic field and that ancient magnetic field is the field that we are trying to now detect wow thank you and Gary Walters on X is asking a question we've touched on before but if you're just tuning in he wants to know will the spacecraft retrieve any materials from the asteroid Carver so we're not going to retrieve any samples uh from psyche we're just going to be using our instruments
as we're in orbit to study the surface and get better and better Maps psyche as we get closer and closer and closer to the asteroid great and Carver a few more people are asking when will this Mission be launched uh we're going to be launching October 5th and then it's going to be about five years before it arrives at psyche itself so it'll arrive at the asteroid in August of 2029 great thank you uh Curtis horn on YouTube asks do we know about neear asteroids that are also metallic Rona I don't
believe we do I don't I mean we can get back to your that question I don't believe there are any big ones psyche is definitely unique in the sense that it's the largest known metallic object ever observed by mankind so uh I don't know if there may be metallic objects near the Earth great uh question yeah well we'll get back to him with an answer yeah thank you and then Johnny Cheese on YouTube asks how many cameras are on board and what will the resolutions of the images be so the psyche spacecr
aft has two imagers on board and the image quality of the resolution is going to get better as we move later on and as basically as the spacecraft gets closer to the surface we'll be able to see more detail on the surface with the best images we're hoping to be about 5 m per pixel or about 15 feet per pixel across uh on the surface and I have another question for you Carver Max shivitz on YouTube wants to know what's the difference between an asteroid and a protoplanet uh so asteroids we see tod
ay in our solar system most of them are spread out between Mars and Jupiter uh much much smaller chunks of Rock than the earth or even our own Moon a protoplanet would have been an object early in solar system history that was growing getting much much larger and some of those protoplanets would have gone on to become the planets that we see in our solar system today like we're standing on Earth here and some of those other protoplanets may have collided with others and merged to form bigger pro
toplanets and some of them may have collided and broken apart and some of that debris from them breaking apart is still left over in the asteroid belt great thank you and rajelt T on YouTube asks is psyche a magnetic Planet will it have the potential to save water molecules from solar winds Rona oh very interesting question uh well if it is magnetized it may be able to protect its own surface from the solar wind uh however it is very very low chance if at all that it has water molecules around i
ts surface um we have a a very low gravity compared to the earth uh even the moon has very very little uh water molecules hovering around its surface very hard to detect so we don't believe an object like psyche would likely have water molecules around it but Psy's magnetic field will definitely if it exists will'll definitely be able to Shield it at least in part from solar radiation uh solar w and cosmic rays and we're still getting some great questions that are coming in uh a viewer on YouTub
e is asking what is the diameter and the gravity of the psyche asteroid Carver do you know that one uh Rona you just gave the size a minute ago do you w to uh diameter is 250 kilometers I don't know it's in miles but is basically the size of Massachusetts uh and I don't know about the gravity maybe Carver can estimate we could maybe get back to them yeah well that was a great question from this viewer we will get back to you with that answer too thank you and I really do like when you put it in
like that size method the size of Massachusetts that really adds like some great perspective on it uh Bonnie on Facebook asks if the inner core of a planet was going through space what would you call it an asteroid or something else we'll call it psychic that's a perfect answer Uh Kevin Cook on YouTube wants to know how close will the space draft come to the psyche asteroid I think the closest approach is around 70 kilometers all right thank you and then a viewer wants to know what is the amount
of material within the asteroid belt be enough to form a a planet what is the possibility that the belt is a transition phase like Saturn's rings Carver so uh there's not enough mass in the asteroid belt to form Planet even of like the size of Mars um there's just not that much material left over there um and we see a lot of surfaces on some of these asteroids that are very old and have a lot of craters from pre previous missions like the dawn spacecraft that went to visit the asteroid Vesta so
we know that there's a lot of these asteroids that have been there for all of solar system history um and it's not something that's actively like forming and creating new planets there right now uh these are literally just the leftovers from these processes that happened when all the plants were forming billions of years ago and I think I have a followup question for you Shalom hammer on YouTube asks does psyche have any moons uh it does not have any moons that we know of that uh this time we w
ouldn't expect there to be any that we like haven't seen yet unless there's maybe just some very small debris uh kind of Trapped around an orbit but we haven't seen any moons at s thank you Carver and we have another question coming in from j2x on X is asking it is an interesting mission know two ways about it but what does NASA plan to do with the data following its successful Mission further research and understanding only or a basis for follow on missions to similar objects Rona that's an exc
ellent question so uh we are explorers we always think about the next mission uh so every mission that every planet that we visit every object that we visit uh all the information uh is gathered is analyzed by the scientists that built instrument and being then distributed to the public so you can actually go asasa websites and download all the data from previous missions and then you and everybody around the world can think about what would be the next question the next object we would be going
uh to explore and even before then uh when we plan a mission we only plan it to so many years uh few years uh of orbiting dashboard psych for example but if the spacecraft remains intact we always think about oh if we actually survive those first two years what are we going to do next are we going to land on the object are we going to go visit another object and almost every mission in the recent years that you've seen actually extended itself and chose another Target so you don't you don't eve
n have to wait for the next mission we'll just keep exploring with the spacecraft that we have hopefully those are some exciting possibilities Carver do you have anything to add no that was a great answer perfect we'll go on to space guy on YouTube why psyche aren't there any closer asteroids that could be visited give that one to you Carver sure I mean the thing that makes psyche special is it is the largest metallic asteroid that we know of in our solar system um we don't know of any other lar
ge object like this that we could go visit um and so if we want to understand what psyche is what these metallic asteroids are and what their relationship is to the earth and its core this is the place to go great and S sah no man on YouTube asks how was the psyche Mission planned I'll give that one to you Rona well it's an interesting story so at first uh um the idea was that we've seen uh a lot of different types of asteroids we've seen the asteroid that are rocky the asteroid that are metalli
c and there was a big question that was uh are they are they coming from the same parent body did they used to be the same uh body in the past or actually are we seeing separate bodies that evolve completely separately uh and then the idea emerged that maybe what's called uh partially differentiated bodies it's a very big term to say that maybe some planets that are some planetary bodies that evolved didn't uh come as in the flavor of core mental uh crust like our planet but maybe they were kind
of something in between just like a core and a mantle or something like that and then if that was correct then maybe some of the meteorites that we are seeing and some of the asids that we are seeing were all part of this those bodies that were uh uh only like partially becoming a planet and in order to address this question uh the jet proportion laboratory at Nasa approach the scientist that started this Mission uh Professor Lindy alkin Stanton Ben Weiss and others uh and ask them how will we
design a mission that would actually answer that question and that started the whole idea of bringing together all the people that can build spacecraft can build instruments can address other science questions and build this Mission together it's so great to hear about the process that went into putting this Mission together and I just want to thank you both again for answering so great questions that are coming in and please keep sending more our way our experts are going to be right back to an
swer some of your questions but right now take a closer look at how the psyche mission team is preparing for the targeted October 5th launch there aren't many classes of objects left in our solar system that we haven't looked at up close with the spacecraft and one of them that's left is the metal asteroids 16 psyche is an asteroid that orbits the Sun out between Mars and Jupiter the reason that psyche is unique is that it is metal Rich it's believed that it may be a Remnant core of an early pla
net tesmo that was formed in the very very earliest parts of the formation of the solar system and after this planet started forming and this metal core formed inside of that it collided with other bodies that then stripped off the rocky Manel leaving this core imp place this is the part of planets that we can't sample directly today it's too hot the pressure is too high our instruments would melt can't drill a hole that deep in the Earth or other planets so how do we study the core of our plane
t psyche gives us the opportunity to visit a core the only way that humankind can ever do and it would be the first metal object that humankind has ever visited after launch we cruise through interplanet AR space for a number of years uh first we fly by Mars for Gravity assist that'll slingshot us into the asteroid belt and then we're thrusting all the way from there to finally arriving at psyche we'll go into four orbits to collect the necessary measurements that we need from our three primary
instruments so our payload consists of a couple of images which are cameras that take pictures of psyche also gamma Neutron spectrometer which allows us to measure the elemental composition of the surface of psyche and then a magnetometer which will allow us to detect any magnetic field that's left at psyche if psyche still has some sort of Remnant magnetic field that that probably tells us it really was a core it's a strong indicator we also use the radio on the spacecraft as an instrument so w
e can map out the gravity and map out the interior structure that way we're using a particular Thruster Technology Hall effect Thruster technology they operate five times more efficiently than normal Rockets So they use a lot less Fuel and is what allows us to get into orbit around this asteroid solar electric propulsion has been around for quite a while and it has flown before but we are continuing to push the boundaries we're going to have big five panel fold out solar panels that will provide
the electricity for the thrusters which use as propellant the noble gas Xenon this will be the first time that hall effect thrusters have flown in deep space studying the evolution of a planetary body is a detective story there's a magic too when you actually are on the launch pad and you say we're go for launch and you feel like singing and dancing and you feel like throwing up at the same time let's go discover things about our solar system that we have no other way to do I think that it's fu
ndamental to who we are and also who we should be it's an incredible opportunity to be a part of the team making that happen it is great hearing about the mission and what it will discover and it seems like many of our viewers are feeling the same way we have lots of questions still coming in so let's get to a few more our next question comes from ding panda on YouTube who asks will the data collected be immediate released to the public if not released as it's received when will the data be rele
ased do you want to take that one uh we have a a turn around of just a few weeks uh so we just we just have to make sure that uh the data is clean and organized and processed correctly and it's released fairly quickly and then we have a viewer on X asking what will happen to the spacecraft upon Mission completion Carver do you know sure I mean uh right now we don't know there's going to be about a two-year period of science operations as we're moving closer and closer and then kind of as Ron was
talking about a little bit earlier once we get to the end of that period of time then there'll be discussions about okay well what do we do now with everything that we've learned over this amount of time and looking at how much fuel is left on the spacecraft uh there'll be conversations then to try and figure out what those next steps might be but we don't know how the mission will end at this point still a question mark So bubo science on S asks metal Rich which metals are expected to be found
Rona do you want to take that question sure uh we mostly think about iron and nickel when we talk about psyche uh we know from how light is reflected off the surface uh as we explained before in the beginning uh that it does have a lot of uh metal content we don't know how much uh we don't have if it's only in the surface mostly in inside of the body uh but it's mostly uh iron and nickel and minerals that contain iron and nickel and Rona I think we answered this question beforehand but if you'r
e just tuning in Bonnie seberger on Facebook asks how close will the craft get to psyche in its orbit is this something we might have to get back to them uh it's around 70 kilometers so a little bit less than psych's actual radius so pych radius is 113 kilometers it's diameter is uh twice that almost the size of Massachusetts uh and we are going to be close as around a little bit less than its own radius so we're going to see it a pretty close up very nice and so juner on Facebook wants to know
will the psyche module be collecting any other images or taking any other measurements on its Journey to the as destroyed Carver would you like that question um I'm not aware of it Rona do you have anything yes so uh the minute we launch we uh we go through a process where we turn on all our instruments one by one a few days uh apart uh and we start measuring uh from the very beginning uh for the magnetometer we will be measuring the solo wind magnetic field all the way uh in the several years o
f cruise and we're going to be analyzing it and looking at how eruptions from the Sun transverse our spacecraft uh we'll also be doing a Mars flyby so we'll be flying by Mars in order to get some gravity going and get us uh to the asteroid faster uh so when we get closer to Mars we're definitely going to use that as a science opportunity and uh use our instruments to measure Mars's environment thank you brona now we have a question from Don on Facebook who asks of all the words in the world the
language why call it psyche I don't know which one of you wants to take that one first well it's actually called officially 16 psyche and the 16 there is actually uh the number of uh how many asteroids were discovered so it was the number 16 so that kind of tells you how far away in history it was named that way so no one living today was involved in giving it that name name H and it was called psyche after the soul of the of the humans and uh its astronomical symbol is actually a butterfly wing
which is H kind of an illusion to a soul uh and that's just the name that was given to it back in the day in uh by the observatory in Torino in Italy that observed It For the First Time a that's a great story on its history thank you Rona and Muhammad on Facebook wants to know how fast is psyche's day or year um maybe day I'm not quite sure how we can interpret that Rona do you have an idea yeah so today as cver mentioned about the seasons earlier on in the broadcast uh psyche is actually tilte
d tilted uh on its um uh its rotation AIS tilted on the plane where it orbits the Sun so it always has one half H pointing towards the sun it does rotate around itself in a period of four hours so you could say that our day uh but as I said because the rotation axis is actually lying down you always have the north basically pointing towards the sun and the South pointing towards the uh away from it and then you have to wait in P's year as the object is orbiting the Sun and then a different part
of it will be facing the Sun so but in four hours we have a full rotation wow four hours and Carver I have a question for you Kayla wle on YouTube app asks does the psyche asteroid actually have the two craters depicted in the picture if so how did you determine the craters are there yeah so uh what we see right now with the radar data from ARA where they're bouncing these radar signals off of psyche and listening to those returns is we can see that there are divots that this is not just a smoot
h round sphere has a very complicated shape and it does look like there's two to probably two big-ish craters or big divots of some kind near the southern pole um but we don't know exactly what those look like yet because again right now all of our images are very fuzzy essentially very low resolution view of what the shape of psyche looks like so they may look quite different from how we have artists imagining it right now or maybe it'll look pretty similar with tu large craters there like we s
ee on some other asteroids like besta which has a very large crater near its Southern pole as well I'm really excited to see those first pictures come in and see how accurate the the artist illustration was and Danielle on YouTube asks why is there such an increase in the number of these smaller bodies found more than years ago with them being so small compared to planets how do we detect them in the first place Rona uh excellent question uh the short answer is technology we have better telescop
es we have better computer programs that can detect very small signals uh so we are able to do the unimaginable of seeing planets in Far Away solar systems uh and really just by uh analyzing the the the light that's coming off of Their Stars uh so you can imagine what kind of sensitivity we have been building in the last few years um and uh we're just able to uh divert more resources computer and Telescope resources to detect those bodies and of course there is the interest of uh planetary safet
y of monitoring asteroids that may transverse or orbit and they may present a risk so there's definitely a lot of effort put into uh tracking down the tiniest body because the tiniest body can produce a lot of damage if it comes our way yes H thank you Rona and Elaine Hughes on X asks is there instrument to measure density or variances of gravitational field on psyche in a sense there is so the main radio dish that we use to communicate all the data back to Earth we can also use to track the spa
cecraft really precisely so as the spacecraft is going in its orbit it's getting tugged on by psyche and if there's a large density difference a large mountain nearby it's going to feel that tug at psyche surface we can measure that and see what does the detailed gravity of psyche look like what are those density variations within psyche itself and see what that tells us about how psyche is put together what it's made out of thank you Carver and we know that lots of people are still joining in t
o the broadcast and learning about the psyche Mission with us in real time so Kevin Brent cook has a question we've touched on for but since he's just tuning in Rona how close will the psyche probe come to the asteroid yes so the psych probe uh will start orbiting uh the asteroid uh a few hundred of kilometers above the surface but then it would slowly go into increasingly smaller orbits as you can see here uh and you can see some of them are tilted in a different orientation so the closest one
is the one that you see that's vertical uh that's what we call OBT and that's the closest one and that's about 70 kilom about the above the surface thank you and another question we touched on before Tamir RZ on YouTube asks how long will the spacecraft study the psyche asteroid Carver uh the main mission has planned to be a little over two years in orbit starting with that high orbit that R is talking about slowly getting closer and closer to the surface as we learn more and then another questi
on from toer on YouTube could the psyche asteroid collide with Earth Carver so psyche asteroid has been out in the asteroid belts between Mars and Jupiter for all of solar system history it looks to be on an incredibly stable orbit so uh there it's not going to ever cross Earth's orbit and have any chance of colliding with the Earth great thank you and then Professor Marco Nunes George from the Aerospace Academy of Mexico asks how is is it possible to bring some stem activity or steam activity t
o Middle School classrooms about the psyche Mission Rona Carver would you both like to take that one that is an excellent question uh psyche actually has a huge effort uh when it comes to outreach and education uh and if he would like to uh contact us uh Cassi Bowman that was involved in this broadcast will be able to uh share a lot of opportunities and different initiatives that the py mission has from college students and elementary school and middle school children that we are involved with t
his would be a fantastic it uh mission to learn about and Don on YouTube asks does the team anticipate the possibility of discovering previously unknown or undiscovered elements on psyche Carver we don't expect to find new types of elements that we have haven't seen other places in the solar system before created in our Labs before um what we expect to see is kind of different combinations on the surface um the minerals that we find are going to be minerals that we've seen other places before bu
t it's how they're put together that's going to tells the story of psyche and how it's got to be the way it is great and we have another question about launch I'll see if we can answer this one crash on YouTube asks how long is the launch window I know it's instantaneous but how many days do we have a chance I'm already expecting to spend some time at the cape that's great to hear Rona Carver do you one of you have an answer well we're all planning uh and excitedly waiting to spending some time
on the cap uh so the launch window for each day uh is very very short we plan to launch around uh 10: a.m. 10:30 a.m. H and if uh the conditions do not permitted we're just going to skip to the next day I think the entirety of the launch opportunity is about three to four weeks but I can double check yeah we'll we'll get back to you with an answer thank you crash I'm excited for you to go to the cape and I just want to say that we are actually running out of time but I do have one final question
for both of you you know we have lots of viewers today interested in the work both of you are doing what advice do you have for people who may want to get involved in scienti research Carver we'll start with you yeah so I think the biggest piece of advice would ask lots of questions be really curious about the world around you and dig in and try to find these answers and keep poking and asking those good questions because that'll drive you to you know working in trying to find answers to those
questions curiosity and uh Rona what about you definitely I'll double down on curiosity remain curious cultivate your curiosity follow it uh and also be creative about it there there is no single way to be part of the space exploration community that you don't have to be a physicist or astrophysicist or an engineer there are many different ways in in which you can participate in this uh great Human Adventure uh and always look for opportunities and seize them when they come your way because that
's really important that's a great Point space is for everyone I'd like to thank you both individually thank you Dr Carver bearon for your time today thank you so much for having me and then Dr Rona Oran thank you again for your time thank you so much no it was a pleasure talking to both of you and learning about the psyche Mission you know I'd like to also thank everyone tuning in online I love that we were able to answer so many interesting questions we hope you'll keep following NASA's effort
s to study these mysterious worlds to stay updated follow NASA solar system on Facebook X and Instagram to learn more about psyche and stay updated on its October 5th launch visit nasa.gov psyche and if you're a social media Creator interested in attending the launch and getting a behindthescenes look at NASA's Kennedy Space Center submit an application for our 2day in-person NASA social applications are now open and the deadline to apply is noon eastern time on Monday August 28th thank you agai
n and see you next time [Applause] [Music] [Music]
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