Deep in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, three times farther from the Sun than the Earth is, orbits a massive asteroid called (16) Psyche. Our upcoming exploration of this metal-rich asteroid marks an important first for humankind: We have sent people or robots to explore rocks bodies, like the Moon and Mars, and icy ones, like Europa and Enceladus, and gas-rich bodies like Jupiter, but never a body made mostly of metal. If Psyche turns out to be what we think, we’ll be visiting a new kind of world. In this Science and Society talk Lindy Elkins-Tanton will explain how a NASA mission comes to be, who is working on our team, and how far we’ve come in building this spacecraft.
