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. This asteroid has the potential to unlock the story of how planets form, and how our planet formed. Soon we will find out, thanks to NASA’s $950 million Psyche mission which is scheduled for launch August 1 and led by Lindy Elkins-Tanton.

The Psyche story is a part of Elkins’Tanton’s new memoir, A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman, forthcoming from William Morrow on June 7. During a traumatic childhood, Lindy fell in love with science as a means of healing and consolation. But she wondered: as a woman, was science for her? In answering that question, we go from the wilds of the Siberian tundra to the furthest reaches of outer space, from the Mayo Clinic, where she battled ovarian cancer while writing the Psyche proposal, to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where her team has brought that proposal to life.

Join The Explorers Club and Lindy Elkins-Tanton for the latest installment of our Monday night lecture series.

Streaming live here on explorers.org, our YouTube Channel, and our Facebook Live — Monday, May 23rd at 7:00 pm ET.

speakers

LINDY ELKINS TANTON

Lindy Elkins-Tanton is a planetary scientist and member of the National Academy of Sciences. She is the Principal Investigator of NASA’s Psyche mission, and the Vice President of the Interplanetary Initiative at Arizona State University, one of the top Earth and planetary science research schools in the world. Among her major original research achievements are the proof that the Siberian flood basalts caused the end-Permian extinction, the revelation that rocky planets are born wet, and the concept of “drip volcanism.” Asteroid (8252) Elkins-Tanton is named for her.

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