NSN Webinar Series - Psyche: Exploration of a Metal World with Dr. David Williams
Join the NASA Night Sky Network on Wednesday, April 16, at 6:00 PM Pacific Time (9:00 PM Eastern) along with Dr. David Williams where we’ll discuss the current status of NASA’s Psyche Mission.
In January 2017 NASA selected Arizona State University to lead the next of its small, Discovery-class robotic planetary missions, named Psyche. Named after its intended destination, Main Belt asteroid (16) Psyche is the largest M-class (metallic) asteroid in the Solar System. It is thought to be the Fe-Ni core of an ancient planetesimal, where the crust and mantle were removed by multiple impact events. The Psyche spacecraft will begin orbiting the asteroid in August of 2029 on a 24-month mission of exploration and discovery. Join Professor David Williams, the Deputy Imager Lead for the mission, for a discussion of asteroid Psyche, the mission, its objectives, and its place in the broader exploration of our Solar System.
About Dr. David Williams:
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 10,461Dawilliams was named in his honor. He was the Secretary of the Planetary Sciences Section of the American Geophysical Union in 2019-2020.
