 "Nasa Psyche")
NASA's Psyche spacecraft launched on Friday, October 13, 2023, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The Spacecraft will travel to 3.5 billion kilometres or 2.2 billion miles and will arrive at the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter in 2029 where asteroid 16 Psyche awaits.
This NASA mission will help humanity to find some of the most important questions about the asteroid Psyche, the solar system, its origin and more.
5 things you should know about NASA’s asteroid-exploring Psyche mission
Origin of Solar System
According to NASA's official website, NASA scientists using the data obtained by earth-based radar and optical telescopes, speculate that the asteroid Psyche could be part of the metal-rich interior of a planetesimal, which is a building block of a rocky planet that was never formed.
During the early formation, the Psyche may have collided with large bodies and lost its outer rocky shell. Humans can't drill a path to Earth's metal core, so visiting Psyche could offer a one-of-a-kind window into the history of violent collisions and the accumulation of matter that created planets like our own.
Different story of solar system formation
This Psyche mission from NASA could tell a different story about the formation of solar system objects. As rocks on Mars, Earth and Venus are flush with iron oxides, the surface of Psyche doesn't seem to feature these chemical compounds. Hence, the history of standard stories could differ from standard stories or planetary formation.
Scientists will learn the history of the asteroid, which resembles that of rocky planets if it is proved that the asteroid is a leftover material from planetary building blocks. And if scientists discover that the Psyche is not an exposed core, then it may prove to be a never-before-seen sort of primordial solar system object.
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First-time use of a propulsion system beyond the moon
Psyche's solar electric propulsion system, powered by Hall-effect thrusters, harnesses energy from large solar arrays to create electric and magnetic fields. In turn, this accelerates and expels charged atoms or ions of a propellant which is called xenon(a neutral gas used in car headlights and plasma TVs) at such high speed that it creates thrust.
The four Psyche thrusters operate at a time and exert the same amount of force that you feel holding three-quarters in the palm of your hand. In the frictionless void of space, the spacecraft will slowly accelerate.
This Psyche propulsion is also built on the same technologies which were used in Nada's Dawn mission. However, the Psyche is the agency's first mission to use Hall-effect thrusters in deep space.
Psyche is a collaboration
The Psyche mission draws resources from NASA, industry and universities. The principal investigator, Lindy Elkins-Tanton, is based at Arizona State University. To enable nationwide collaboration, the partnership offers opportunities to train future instrument mission leads in science and engineering which inspire students, entrepreneurship, innovation, and projects involving art. Many other universities and research institutions are represented on the mission team.
Deep Space Optical Communications
Demonstration of Deep Space Optical CommunicationsA technology demonstration called Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) will fly on Psyche spacecraft to test the high data rate laser communication that would be used by future NASA missions. DSOC is managed by JPL for the technology demonstration mission program within NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate and the Space Communications and Navigations program within the Space Operations Mission Directorate.
Psyche is NASA's 14th mission which is managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
