Editors' Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU's journal editors.
Source: AGU Advances
The mental illness The spacecraft was launched on 13 October 2023 and is on track to visit its prime destination. Asteroid 16 Psychology. The target was originally chosen because the asteroid Psyche was thought to represent part of a metallic core that was left behind when different planets broke apart. By examining such a body and comparing it to small pieces of metal, iron meteorites, we can analyze in the laboratory, prepared for a proposal for a compelling discovery mission.
In a new commentary, Dibb et al. [2024] Summarize the capabilities of the Psych spacecraft and the scientific questions they hope it will answer. They also offer the most up-to-date thinking on the composition of psyche, which is ambiguous. It seems unlikely that it will be an all-metal body, but a detailed answer will have to wait for Psyche's arrival in August 2029.
Citation: Dibb, SD, Asphaug, E, Bell, JF, Binzel, RP, Bottke, WF, Cambioni, S, et al. (2024) Post-release summary of science on NASA's Psyche mission. AGU Advances5, e2023AV001077. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023AV001077
—Francis Nimmo, author, AGU Advances