Lindy Elkins-Tanton Principal Investigator of the Psyche mission from Arizona State University gives remarks during a briefing discussing small bodies missions, Monday, Dec. 31, 2018 at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate Thomas Zurbuchen, left, Olivier Barnouin (US Instrument Scientist, Johns Hopkins University/APL), Harold "Hal" Levison from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, Lindy Elkins-Tanton Principal Investigator of the Psyche mission from Arizona State University, and New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, CO, right, are seen during a briefing discussing small bodies missions, Monday, Dec. 31, 2018 at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

A member of the media interviews the principal investigator of NASA's Psyche mission, Lindy Elkins-Tanton, in front of the spacecraft on April 11, 2022, inside a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. After engineers at JPL put their final touches on the spacecraft, Psyche will ship to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it is scheduled to launch in August 2022 on a journey to a metal-rich asteroid of the same name. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25241

Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche principal investigator, Arizona State University, participates in a Psyche mission and science briefing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023. Psyche is the first mission to explore an asteroid with a surface that likely contains substantial amounts of metal rather than rock or ice. Liftoff of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, is targeted for 10:16 a.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 12, from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche principal investigator, Arizona State University, participates in a Psyche mission and science briefing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023. Psyche is the first mission to explore an asteroid with a surface that likely contains substantial amounts of metal rather than rock or ice. Liftoff of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, is targeted for 10:16 a.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 12, from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A.

A Psyche mission and science briefing takes place at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023. Participants, from left, are: Alana Johnson, NASA Communications; Lori Glaze, Planetary Science division director, NASA Headquarters; Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche principal investigator, Arizona State University; Ben Weiss, Psyche deputy principal investigator and magnetometer lead, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; David Oh, Psyche chief engineer for operations, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL); and Abi Biswas, Deep Space Optical Communications project technologist, JPL. Psyche is the first mission to explore an asteroid with a surface that likely contains substantial amounts of metal rather than rock or ice. Liftoff of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, is targeted for 10:16 a.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 12, from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A.

A Psyche mission and science briefing takes place at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023. Participants, from left, are: Alana Johnson, NASA Communications; Lori Glaze, Planetary Science division director, NASA Headquarters; Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche principal investigator, Arizona State University; Ben Weiss, Psyche deputy principal investigator and magnetometer lead, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; David Oh, Psyche chief engineer for operations, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL); and Abi Biswas, Deep Space Optical Communications project technologist, JPL. Psyche is the first mission to explore an asteroid with a surface that likely contains substantial amounts of metal rather than rock or ice. Liftoff of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, is targeted for 10:16 a.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 12, from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A.

The science briefing ahead of launch for NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, a mission to a unique metal-rich asteroid. Psyche will travel nearly six years and about 2.2 billion miles (3.6 billion kilometers) – to an asteroid of the same name, which is orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists believe Psyche could be part of the core of a planetesimal, likely made of iron-nickel metal. The ore will not be mined but studied from orbit in hopes of giving researchers a better idea of what may make up Earth’s core. The Psyche spacecraft also will host a pioneering technology demonstration: NASA’s DSOC (Deep Space Optical Communications) experiment. This laser communications system will operate for the first two years of Psyche’s journey. Launch is targeted for 10:16 a.m. EDT, Thursday, Oct. 12, from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A. The participants include Lori Glaze, director, Planetary Sciences Division, NASA Headquarters in Washington; Lindy Elkins-Tanton, principal investigator of Psyche, Arizona State University; Ben Weiss, deputy principal investigator and magnetometer lead, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; David Oh, chief engineer for operations, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and Abi Biswas, project technologist for DSOC, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

NASA's Psyche spacecraft captured images of Earth and our Moon from about 180 million miles (290 kilometers) away in July 2025. The images were obtained during one of the mission team's periodic maintenance and calibration tests for the twin cameras that make up the imager instrument. Scientists on the imaging team, led by Arizona State University, captured multiple long-exposure (up to 10-second) pictures of the two bodies, which appear as dots sparkling with reflected sunlight amid a starfield in the constellation Aries. The observations help the team determine how the cameras respond to solar system objects that shine by reflected sunlight, just like the Psyche asteroid. In January 2025, Psyche captured an image that included Mars, Jupiter, and the Jovian moons Io, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. The image here was captured by Psyche's primary camera, Imager A, on July 23. The Psyche mission is led by ASU. Lindy Elkins-Tanton of the University of California, Berkeley is the principal investigator. A division of Caltech in Pasadena, JPL is responsible for the mission's overall management, system engineering, integration and test, and mission operations. Maxar Technologies in Palo Alto, California, provided the high-power solar electric propulsion spacecraft chassis. ASU leads the operations of the imager instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego on the design, fabrication, and testing of the cameras. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA26569