The Psyche Odyssey

Commander Jane Fletcher floated in her cabin aboard the Starship Odyssey, peering out a square window that had been built into her ship. Her cabin was small—only a few feet wide, a few feet tall, and just long enough for it to be able to fit most humans. And yet, with its views of the endless vacuum of space, it didn’t exactly feel small.

Jane was used to seeing nothing but stars. On an interplanetary mission such as her own, there weren’t any planets or interesting objects to observe during the coast phase—just stars. But today was different. The Odyssey had arrived at its destination and this time, when Jane looked out her window, she saw a massive, cratered asteroid below her. The asteroid, 16 Psyche, was covered in metallic gray outcroppings dotting a surface tinted red by its incredibly high iron content.

As Jane looked out her window, she remembered watching the launch of the first probe to visit Psyche from Cape Canaveral when she was still in High School. She remembered hearing the rumble of its 27 engines and the twin sonic booms of its side boosters as they landed. Four years later, Jane was almost done with college when the probe sent back its first results, indicating the presence of incredibly pure veins of valuable metals so dense in resources that they could justify an interplanetary mission just to retrieve them. In the following years, she watched as businesses and governments alike began to conspire to explore the asteroid and to be the first to obtain those resources.

She was on the Moon when, in 2029, an international mission to the asteroid was finally announced—an international collaboration between nations and corporations designed to balance the competing goals of learning about Psyche and gaining access to its resources.

And now, after years of watching things unfold, she was here, commanding the first mission to Psyche and struggling to sleep with the knowledge that the next day, she would become the first human being to step foot on an asteroid.

It was early in the morning when a rather large lander docked with the Odyssey to bring its crew to the surface of Psyche. The lander, named Explorer, featured two fuel tanks on either side of a five-meter wide central gap within which modules were placed to be transported to the surface of Psyche. Below each fuel tank was a small engine to land the modules.

Explorer was one of two landers that had already been used to assemble a base—Unity Base—on the surface of Psyche. And now, the Explorer had been outfitted with a module to carry crew to the base. This cylindrical metal module featured a docking port on either end and hung from a pylon attaching the two fuel tanks, which was not a problem only because of the low gravity of Psyche.

For Jane Fletcher and her crew, transferring from the Odyssey to the Explorer felt like a breath of fresh air. The transfer from a sleek, state-of-the-art spacecraft designed to fit a crew of 100 but only carrying 12 to a utilitarian spacecraft that could barely fit its twelve-person landing party shouldn't have been a positive experience. However, after spending months stuck inside of the Odyssey, its smooth surfaces and control screens felt lifeless and limiting, and the rough edges and analog switches of the Explorer crew cabin felt new and different. When the time came to close the hatches of the Odyssey, the landing party were just as excited to be on a vehicle other than the Odyssey as they were to step foot on an asteroid.

The crew onboard the Explorer slowly glided to their final positions. Jane sat next to her first officer, Mark Wilson, at the front of the module, above a window that was built into the bottom of the structure to help them see their destination in case they had to land manually. Mark Wilson was another member of Jane’s astronaut class, the most nervous astronaut she had ever seen but also one of the most brilliant engineers she had had the opportunity to know. In their positions, the crew of the Explorer went through their final checklists to prepare for undocking, putting on their space suits in case of a rapid depressurization and making sure everything was in order. And then, once they were ready, Jane gave the command to undock.

A few moments after undocking, the Explorer’s thrusters fired to bring the vessel away from the Odyssey, slowly separating the two spacecraft. Jane watched the Odyssey disappear into the distance, its stainless steel figure gradually becoming smaller until it became too small to see. Eventually, the vehicle automatically activated its engines to begin the landing process. Jane watched the number on her altimeter drop as the spacecraft approached Unity Base.

She peered out her window to watch as Unity Base slowly emerged over the horizon. What was most noticeable was the solar array positioned above the rest of Unity Base, which appeared first—a large field of navy blue solar panels which sprawled out from the tower that held them above the base. On the ground was a cylindrical metal core module which stood upright and had landed itself on the asteroid independently before the other modules were delivered. The other four modules, which were all just wide enough to fit between the fuel tanks of Explorer, were placed on their sides and attached to the core module at their ends by advanced docking tunnels extending from the core module.

As the Explorer approached, Jane could see the structure more clearly. She could clearly make out the bends in the extensible docking tunnels, as well as the logos of the corporations and national space agencies that had been involved in constructing Unity Base. She recalled being on Earth and seeing those same modules and components being attached to their launch vehicles and watching them launch into space. And now, she was ready to make use of them at their final destination.

Jane’s thoughts were interrupted by an alarm blaring through the crew cabin. The sound of the vehicle’s thrusters paused, and it began to float towards the surface of Psyche. Jane paused for a brief moment before taking manual control of the spacecraft and firing the thrusters to keep it from crashing into Unity Base.

“What’s going on?” she heard her first officer, Mark Wilson, ask.

“I’m not sure,” Jane replied, focusing on controlling the vehicle, “The navigational control system must’ve failed. The vehicle’s responding just fine to manual controls,”

“Are you sure it’s still safe to land?” Mark asked her.

“Yes,” She replied as she continued to lower the vehicle. By that point, she had canceled out all of its velocity. Jane continued, “This thing has more than enough fuel to play it as safe as we want, and I’ve been trained to land it properly.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t abort to orbit?” Mark asked her. “We can do a systems check there.”

“Mark,” Jane snapped. “We’re almost to the ground, and I’d much rather this spacecraft be on the ground next to Unity Base than floating somewhere in orbit around Psyche, so why don’t you try to get the navigation system back online rather than worrying about this."

“Understood,” Mark spoke as Jane carefully navigated the module over the surface of Psyche in search of the best place to land. Simultaneously, Mark tapped away at his console to try to get the navigation system back online.

“I’ve got it!” Mark exclaimed suddenly before finally flicking a switch to restart the system. At that moment, the whir of thrusters firing echoed through the cabin. Jane looked down to see the ground below her spin faster and faster. At the same time, she felt the spacecraft rotate rapidly.

“Turn it off!” Jane yelled to Mark as her vision began to blur.

“I’m trying!” Mark responded, reaching out to grab the console. A moment later, silence filled the spacecraft as the thrusters went offline.

“I’m trying to reverse the spin!” Jane yelled as she tried to fire the thrusters. She could barely see the console at that point, and simply held down the button to fire thrusters against the spin.

A brief moment later, she finally began to see clearly and looked out the window to see the spacecraft only feet from the ground. At that instant, as the vehicle stopped spinning, she moved her hand to the landing thrusters, stopping the spacecraft just as it touched the ground.

“Deactivating thrusters, activating ground anchors,” she said. (The spacecraft’s landing legs were designed to anchor it to the ground to prevent it from getting pushed around by small forces in Psyche’s low gravity.) “All systems are good. Unity base here—the Explorer has landed.”

As the crew paused for a moment, an eerie but refreshing silence filled the spacecraft as they all took in a breath of air and let their heads stop spinning.

“Make plans to depressurize the spacecraft for EVA,” Jane said after almost a minute of silence. She stood up from her seat at that point. She floated for a moment, briefly wondering whether Psyche had any gravity at all before she noticed she was, in fact, beginning to float towards the floor.

The crew of the Explorer opened the vehicle's hatch about 20 minutes after landing, having already depressurized their spacecraft. As Jane stepped out the hatch first, she looked to see Unity Base in the distance. The base was perfectly intact, and its solar array now towered above her rather than below her—a sight which she had been waiting for for months. As she stepped out of the hatch, she was careful not to accidentally lose her grip, knowing how far she could fly if she did. And then, as she reached the ground, she let go.

Slowly, she glided down to the surface of the asteroid before after years of anticipation, finally stepping foot upon its surface.