August 13, 2018 10:00 pm

New Tuesday: Investigate Comets, Asteroids, and the Psyche Mission with Natalie Starkey, Mo Welch, and David Oh

On this week’s episode of StarTalk All-Stars, we end our summer hiatus with a brand new episode breaking down Michael Bay’s seminal 1998 science-fiction film Armageddon. Just kidding. We wouldn’t torture our loyal StarTalk fans like that. Instead, we’re discussing actual, exciting science featuring the real-life people at the forefront of studying comets and asteroids, including the metal asteroid, Psyche.

We’re led on our cosmic journey by All-Stars host and cosmochemist Natalie Starkey, who’s joined by first time comic co-host Mo Welch, and David Oh, JPL Project Systems Engineer and the mission architect of the Psyche mission. Here’s a little about the Psyche:

“The Psyche mission is a journey to a unique metal asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. What makes the asteroid Psyche unique is that it appears to be the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet, one of the building blocks of our solar system.”

You’ll learn about the objectives of the Psyche mission and why it’s such a unique object. Discover why the mission is bringing along a magnetometer, a gamma ray neutron spectrometer, and an imager in order to collect data. Notice how they’re not bringing a giant drill and a ragtag group of oil workers. David also tells us what the leading theory is behind the origins of Psyche. If you want all the details of the Psyche mission you can find them on the JPL Psyche page.

However, in order to understand the nuances of the Psyche mission, we have to start a little further back. You’ll hear Natalie give a brief history of how comets and asteroids come to be in the solar system. As a reminder, asteroids are usually made of metals and rock material while comets are made of ice, dust, and rocky material.

You’ll also learn about other missions to asteroids, the future of space mining, and the difficulties of landing on and launching from celestial bodies. We also discuss NASA’s actual team of real people who are studying how we would defend the planet if an asteroid strike were imminent (a.k.a. “Not-Bruce Willis”).

Lastly, we answer some fan-submitted Cosmic Queries on asteroids hitting the moon, asteroid mining, Lucky Charms, the impact of comets on weather and climate, and much more!

Please join us tomorrow night for Comets, Asteroids, and the Psyche Mission, with Natalie Starkey at 7pm ET right here on our website, as well as on our All-Stars channel on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and TuneIn. And if you’re an All-Access subscriber, you can watch or listen to this episode ad-free at 7pm, too.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Ian Mullen