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and the Psyche TeamIn January 2017, the Psyche mission concept was selected as the 14th in NASA's Discovery Program. The mission would explore the unique metallic asteroid, (16) Psyche, believed to be the exposed core of a larger planetesimal that was stripped of its rocky mantle through multiple collisions during the early formation of the solar system. While the scientific goals of the Psyche mission concept are novel, the approach to science and mission operations is adapted from the earlier Dawn mission. Psyche shares two major attributes with Dawn, also Discovery class, that makes Dawn an obvious template. Both missions orbit massive bodies in the main asteroid belt with previously unmeasured gravity fields, and both utilize solar electric propulsion. The Dawn operations concept was developed over many years, coming to completion while the spacecraft was en route to the first target, protoplanet (4) Vesta. Because these concepts were demonstrated in flight, the Psyche team was able to reuse them to realize a plan of similar fidelity during the first phase of proposal development. Understanding the operations concept to this level of detail during mission formulation reduces the implementation risk of the Psyche mission.

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