Meteorites from ASU’s Carleton B Moore Meteorite collection are helping scientists to understand asteroids and the formation of the Solar System.
NASA’s Psyche mission is the first to explore a unique metal-rich asteroid to improve our knowledge of iron cores. The spacecraft will explore asteroid Psyche, which may be the partial core of a planetesimal, a building block of an early planet. Comparison of Psyche spacecraft data to meteorites will enable scientists to constrain asteroid Psyche’s composition.
Buseck Center for Meteorite Studies Curator Laurence Garvie is a member of the Scientific and Technical Guidance Team for Psyche’s Iron Meteorite Imaging System. Garvie is also part of a team of researchers who performed a series of high-velocity impact experiments on iron meteorites and cast metal ingots with iron and nickel compositions similar to iron meteorites. The results of these impact experiments will be utilized to interpret the nature and history of asteroid Psyche when the ASU-led NASA Psyche mission reaches its destination.
Watch full coverage of the Psyche mission launch below!
