On our way! The Psyche Mission to the Asteroid Belt

by Dr Morgan Burks (Livermore National Laboratory)

Thursday 25 Apr 2024, 12:00 → 13:00 US/Pacific

Auditorium (50)

Abstract:
On October 13th, 2023, NASA’s Psyche mission launched from KennedySpace Center and is now headed towards the asteroid belt. Its goal is to visit the unusual M-class asteroid known as 16-Psyche. One of the primary science instruments onboard is a high-resolution gamma-ray spectrometer built by LLNL. The gamma-ray spectrometer (GRS) will help identify the elemental composition of the asteroid, which is thought to be composed largely of iron and nickel, indicative of the remnants of a planetary core. Although this spacecraft will be in cruise for many years, we have already taken the first background data with the GRS. We have confirmed that it is the highest-resolution gamma-ray spectrometer that has ever flown into space, achieving nearly lab-quality resolution of 2.09 keV fwhm at 1332 keV. This talk will focus on the launch of the spacecraft from KSC, the performance of the GRS incruise, and how our spectrometer will contribute to the science goals of the mission.
 

Speaker Bio: Dr. Morgan Burks is a physicist at Livermore National Laboratory. Hespecializes in instrumentation for gamma-ray spectroscopy and gamma-ray imaging. In particular, he has focused on mechanical cooling of germanium detectors for space and terrestrial applications.He helped develop the first germanium spectrometer in deep space,which is onboard NASA’s Mercury MESSENGER spacecraft. He led the development of GeMini, an ultra-light weight, low-power germanium spectrometer for national security applications. Currently he is working on instruments for three NASA deep-space planetary missions to the asteroid belt, the moons of Mars, and Saturn’s largest moon Titan.