Mission Psyche: Spacecraft Journal Entry
SAMANTHA MANLEY
April 15th, 2026
Major: Illustration
Genre/Medium: Digital
About the Work:
“Just as ancient cartographers filled the uncharted edges of their seafaring maps with drawings of sea monsters and dragons, modern designers of vehicles traveling to other planets confront a legion of hazards, both imagined and real,” (How to Land on an Alien World, Lorenz). This one line inspired the idea behind my Psyche mission video game, a game that combines fantasy cartography with the science behind the Psyche mission. Aiming to combine STEM concepts with games to help educate a broader audience regarding NASA’s research. The game would have you play as a member of an astro-cartography team, whose recent mission is to map their journey to Psyche as well as the surface of the asteroid itself. Along the way, the player would learn about the mission through field studies as well as collectible research note pages.
For my third project, “Mission Psyche: Spacecraft Journal Entry,” I depicted the Psyche spacecraft and its various instruments as a page straight out of a cartographer’s journal. Alongside drawings of Psyche and its equipment, there are also brief notes taken by the explorer explaining the purpose of each instrument, as well as the spacecraft’s launch/ arrival date. Some instruments noted in the journal are the craft’s magnetometer, spectrometer, and its multispectral imager.
While creating this project, it was important to me to really stick to that old, fantasy cartographer aesthetic. I wanted not only the paper itself to feel old, but also the drawings and handwriting. I researched archives of journal entries from more historic periods to try to keep a similar energy.
Overall, my goal for this project series is to create a game concept that delivers information regarding the Psyche information through the lens of ancient cartographers. It would deal with themes of exploration and wonder, while still delivering STEM topics in a more easily consumable way.
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