PSP/WISPR observations of the dust trail of (3200) Phaethon

We provide details on the detection of a visible white-light dust trail in the orbit of (3200) Phaethon, a large near-Earth "activated" asteroid known to be the parent of the Geminid meteor shower and a target of the JAXA DESTINY+ mission, set to launch in 2022. In white-light observations recorded by the WISPR instrument on NASA Parker Solar Probe (PSP) during the first two mission encounters (Oct 31 - Nov 11, 2018 and Mar 30 - Apr 10, 2019), we observe a dust trail extending some 20-million km along the perihelion portion of Phaethon's orbit, recorded while Phaethon was close to its aphelion. These observations, which constitute the first white-light detection of this trail, imply that Phaethon is sufficiently active to have filled its entire orbit with dust, despite ground-based observations never being able to detect physical activity in Phaethon and only space-based heliospheric imagers detecting very low levels of activity at perihelion. In this presentation we discuss our initial analyses and interpretation of the WISPR observations of the dust trail, including the photometric and implied physical properties of the dust, and hope to present a first look at additional observations of the trail obtained in the third mission encounter (Aug 27 - Sep 7, 2019), recorded just two months after Phaethon's most recent perihelion passage (Jul 02, 2019). We will also outline our plans for future analyses of this trail, which we anticipate should be observable by WISPR for much (if not all) of the PSP mission duration.