"It's just jargon to keep people out of the field." -Lindy Elkins-Tanton

So this LPI is a great teaser for the Psyche mission to Psyche. I think I've seen this speaker give more-or-less the same slideshow as an LPI 2-3 years ago, but it's a great presentation that isn't so high-brow that I need to paraphrase it for a more general audience. Some of the slides are straight eye candy, all of them are intuitive. 

• At 18:20 a Vestoid (by far most asteroids are vestoids) compared to a classic M-class
• The very next slide is something beautiful combining the interesting traits of both
• Most of the slides after 25:00 are mission planning and goals

Psyche was supposed to launch this year, about the time of this post. It was delayed for software problems. The next launch window will be next summer, July and August. It's physically located at Kennedy until then.

One thing to note is that Psyche will be carrying a very powerful magnetometer, and will (probably) do a Mars flyby. Mars missions usually don't carry magnetometers for a variety of reasons, but Mars density is a constant topic, so it may be fun if a measurement gets taken. It has another instrument, DSOC, which is Mars related and described around 30:00.

Watch this LPI if you want to learn much more about M-class asteroids.