Current Student Collaborations Participants
View a list of the students, faculty, staff, and mentors currently involved in Psyche Student Collaborations.
/
Psyche Inspired
Possibilities
Isabella Garcia
March 2nd, 2026
Major: Art & Design
Genre/Medium: Digital Painting
About the work:
This project, “Possibilities,” is a digital painting made to depict different ideas as to what the Psyche asteroid may look like. Since we have not yet reached the asteroid and therefore do not have any pictures of it, we can only speculate what it may be. I chose to do this project because I also felt that it demonstrated the creative minds of scientists. When speaking to scientists and reading articles about the mission, it was interesting to see how the asteroid was described. While they were, of course, using technical terms, I was also inspired by how much beauty they found in wondering what the final destination may look like. I felt a connection to that imagination and wanted to portray that in my project. The four asteroids are illustrated in a “rough” or “sketchy” style for the purpose of demonstrating the fact that these are only ideas and not set in stone. From left to right, they show an asteroid with very little metal on the surface, one that is covered in large patches of metal, another that is solely covered in bedrock, and a fourth that is covered entirely with regolith (small grains of soil, not on Earth). While these are just speculations, I wanted to bring to life the most prominent ideas that scientists have regarding the image of the Psyche Asteroid.
Psyche Inspired Overview
Psyche Inspired is a program that brings undergraduate students from any discipline or major together to share the excitement, innovation, and scientific and engineering content of NASA’s Psyche mission with the public in new ways through artistic and creative works. These works are posted in the gallery above and highlighted on X, Facebook, and Instagram. View the full resolution images in the image gallery. This year’s Psyche Inspired cohort is known as the Platinum Class.
Psyche Inspired was piloted at ASU during the 2017-2018 academic year. The following academic year, Psyche Inspired expanded nationally! The works from each Psyche Inspired cohort are collected in individual downloadable books that tell the story of Psyche through musical scores, sculptures, painting, 3-D models, photography, acrylic art, needlepoint, stop-motion films, mixed media, and more.
Click here to view all the Psyche Inspired books
Take a look at our comprehensive map that shows how the Psyche Inspired program has grown over the years!
