An illustration, created in March 2021, of NASAs Psyche spacecraft, which is targeted to release to the main asteroid belt in August 2022 to investigate the metal-rich asteroid Psyche. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
The Psyche spacecraft completed its journey from NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California to NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It traveled to March Air Reserve Base, about 55 miles southeast of JPL in Riverside County, California, before flying cross-country aboard a C-17 Globemaster III aircraft to the Launch and Landing Facility (formerly the Shuttle Landing Facility) where teams unloaded the spacecraft. Over the next 3 months, the spacecraft will undergo additional preparations before releasing aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on August 1, 2022.
The Psyche spacecraft will utilize solar-electric propulsion to travel roughly 1.5 billion miles (2.4 billion kilometers) to rendezvous with its name asteroid in 2026. This will make it the first spacecraft to utilize Hall-effect thrusters beyond the orbit of the Moon. This thruster innovation traps electrons in a magnetic field and uses them to ionize onboard propellant, using up much less propellant than equivalent chemical rockets. Mind also carries three clinical instruments: an imager, magnetometer, and a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer.
Preparations are underway to unload NASAs Psyche spacecraft from the C-17 airplane it got here aboard at Kennedy Space Centers Launch and Landing Facility in Florida on April 29, 2022. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
The distinct, metal-rich Psyche asteroid might become part of the core of a planetesimal, a foundation of rocky worlds in our planetary system. Finding out more about the asteroid could inform us more about how our own world formed and assist respond to essential concerns about Earths own metal core and the development of our planetary system.
The Psyche spacecraft finished its journey from NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California to NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Psyche spacecraft will utilize solar-electric propulsion to take a trip roughly 1.5 billion miles (2.4 billion kilometers) to rendezvous with its namesake asteroid in 2026. The launch of Psyche will include two secondary payloads, NASAs Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) technical presentation, which is connected to the spacecraft as a separate experiment, and the Janus spacecraft. Psyche will be the 14th mission in the firms Discovery program and LSPs 100th main mission.
The launch of Psyche will include two secondary payloads, NASAs Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) technical presentation, which is connected to the spacecraft as a different experiment, and the Janus spacecraft. DSOC will perform the firms first demonstration of optical communications beyond the Earth-Moon system, and will utilize lasers to send data at a greater rate than typical spacecraft radio communications. Janus is two small spacecraft that will study 2 different binary asteroids (2 asteroids that orbit each other) to comprehend the formation and evolution of these items.
NASAs Psyche mission to a distant metal asteroid will bring an innovative Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) plan. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
The Psyche mission is led by Arizona State University. Mind will be the 14th mission in the firms Discovery program and LSPs 100th main objective. Various worldwide, university, and business partners are part of the Psyche team.
