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psyche

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is a unique object in the solar system

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to us psyche is this really unusual body

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giving off really unusual gamma-ray

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neutron signatures technically it's an

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m-class asteroid out between

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one of the first things you want to know

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is what's it made of

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so the psyche payload consists of three

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science instruments

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one of them is what's called a gamma ray

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neutron spectrometer it's actually two

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separate pieces of hardware one is the

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gamma ray spectrometer and the other one

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is the neutron spectrometer both

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combined study the elemental composition

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of psyche if you know the surface

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composition what it's made of in terms

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of iron and nickel and silicon and

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oxygen you can then start to say

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something about its history and how it

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formed and how it evolved by using gamma

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ray spectroscopy we can

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measure those elements

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remotely we don't have to touch the

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surface we don't have to dig into the

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surface

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for psyche we're building kind of what

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we call the cadillac it's a very high

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precision high sensitivity instrument

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it's very similar to the messenger

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instrument that technology that we

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developed for the messenger spacecraft

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gave us a huge head start going to

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psyche for our types of instruments we

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don't get to fly them very often so when

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we actually get selected for something

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that's a big deal for us where we can

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you know take what we learned from the

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prior missions and implement it now and

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make an even better instrument

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our instrument is kind of like a camera

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without a telephoto lens in order to get

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our best measurements we need to be

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relatively close uh altitude above the

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surface that's what we call orbit d

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so we can form maps global maps of the

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elemental composition of psyche just by

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flying around externally

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you have galactic cosmic rays that's a

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fancy word for very fast protons they

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come in they smack a planetary surface

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they bust apart the atoms in that

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surface all the neutrons rattle around

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and as they rattle around they

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end up producing gamma rays and neutrons

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that come out

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and the gamma rays have energies and

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they're like a fingerprint so if you get

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the fingerprint of different energies

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that says there's iron there is nickel

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there or silicon and then how many of

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those gamma rays tells you how much of

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that element is there

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the first thing it takes to do a mission

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like this is a tremendous amount of

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institutional knowledge of all the

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different aspects not just how do you

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build something how do you

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aim something how do you guide something

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how do you get data from something those

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technical aspects i feel like it's super

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important to have a team that you can

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trust

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because you can guarantee that at some

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point something's going to go wrong

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probably many things over the many years

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of a project so already it's happened

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that in my process of learning about the

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science i've made small changes to the

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design to help optimize and help meet

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the science goals we're kind of the last

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instrument to get its measurements and

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so there is a sense where you're on pins

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and needles until you get that data back

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and then there's a big relief the big

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excitement and then you get to work and

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trying to say what does all this mean so

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we'll deliver some excellent science uh

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at the end