Welcome to the Saguaro Astronomy Club (SAC)

Speaker Topic:

NASA Psyche Mission:  Exploration of a Metal World 

Abstract:

In January 2017, NASA selected Arizona State University to lead a Discovery-class robotic mission to orbit and study Main Belt asteroid (16) Psyche, the largest M-class asteroid in the Solar System.  After over six years of development, the spacecraft launched on October 13, 2023 and is now cruising through the Solar System for a planned arrival in August 2029.  Why do we care about this asteroid?  What makes it unique from other asteroids that have been studied?  Join Professor David Williams from ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, who is Deputy Lead for the Psyche Multispectral Imager, for a discussion of this interesting asteroid and how the NASA Psyche mission will reveal its geological nature and history.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. David A. Williams is a Research Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona. Dr. Williams is the Director of the Ronald Greeley Center for Planetary Studies, a NASA-supported planetary data center at ASU. David is currently performing research in volcanology and planetary geology, with a focus on planetary mapping, geochemical, and remote sensing studies. His research has included computer modeling of seismic wave propagation through planetary interiors, visible and near-infrared spectroscopy of the lunar surface, planetary geologic mapping of the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, the planet Mars, the asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planets Ceres and Pluto, computer modeling of the physical and geochemical evolution of lava flows in a variety of planetary environments, and petrologic study of lava samples from Mount St Helens. He was involved with NASA’s Magellan Mission to Venus, Galileo Mission to Jupiter, the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Mars Express orbiter mission, and the NASA Dawn Mission to asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres.  He is currently a Co-Investigator and Deputy Lead for the multispectral imager on NASA’s Psyche Mission, which launched on October 13, 2023.  He is also a member of the Italian JANUS camera team of the ESA Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission that launched on April 14, 2023.  In 2014 David was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, and asteroid 10,46Dawilliams was named in his honor by the International Astronomical Union.  He was the Secretary of the Planetary Sciences Section of the American Geophysical Union in 2019-2020.