Public AstroNight - "Psyche: Journey to a Metal World"

Lindy Elkins-Tanton (Arizona State University)

Jan 31, 2019 7:00 PM

Location: Frank Dawson Adams Auditorium, 3450 University St.
Public Lecture

Free and open to everyone - no knowledge of Astronomy expected. The lecture begins at 7:00pm sharp in the Frank Dawson Adams Auditorium.

A public talk by Dr. Lindy Elkins-Tanton.

Abstract:When our solar system was just an infant, thousands of small early planets formed in just a few million years. Some grew to hundreds of kilometers as they swept up pebbles, dust and gas within the swirling solar nebula. Over the next few tens of millions of years, many planetesimals crossed paths catastrophically. Colliding worlds merged into even larger protoplanets, eventually forming a small number of large protoplanets. We think that “Hit and run” impacts, a special kind of collision, caused one protoplanet to lose almost all its mantle material, leaving mostly core metal that re-formed into the Psyche asteroid. The Psyche mission has been selected as the fourteenth in the NASA Discovery program. Launching in 2022, this mission will orbit the Psyche asteroid to explore this metal word. In this talk I will introduce what is known and what is hypothesized about Psyche, and explain how we have planned and won the opportunity to fly this mission, and where we are in the mission process today.