Science & Society Public Lecture

Tom Prettyman, a Senior Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, has worked on several NASA missions, including Lunar Prospector, 2001 Mars Odyssey, and Dawn. He is the lead for the Gamma Ray and Neutron Detector investigation on Dawn, which explored the two most massive bodies in the main asteroid belt, 4 Vesta and 1 Ceres. He is also a co-Investigator of the Psyche mission to the main belt asteroid 16 Psyche. His primary area of expertise is planetary remote sensing using nuclear spectroscopy.

Abstract This talk will highlight results from Dawn, which recently completed its 11-year voyage through the main asteroid belt, and prospects for Psyche, which will launch in 2022. Dawn transformed Vesta and Ceres from fuzzy patches of light as viewed by Earth-based telescopes into complex, geologic worlds. The data provide new insights into processes that occurred during the solar system’s earliest epoch. Vesta and Ceres are largely intact protoplanets, representative of the building blocks of the terrestrial planets. In contrast, Psyche was thoroughly disrupted by collisions and is likely the exposed core of an igneous planetesimal. As such, the data acquired by the Psyche mission will complement efforts to understand terrestrial cores through laboratory experiments and meteorite studies. The architecture and enabling technology of the Dawn and Psyche missions are very similar. These are modern examples of robotic space explorers, which over the past 60 years have opened new vistas in planetary science, revolutionizing our understanding of solar system formation and evolution.