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NASA has launched a spacecraft to study the metal asteroid Psyche to determine whether it’s the exposed core of an early planetary building block.
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, Oct. 13, 2023. The spacecraft will travel to the metallic asteroid Psyche, where it will enter orbit in 2029 and be the first spacecraft to explore a metal-rich asteroid. Last year, there wasn’t enough time to conduct a full checkout of the spacecraft’s flight software to ensure it was ready before the. And this year’s launch window was pushed from October 5 to October 12 to give engineers enough time to adjust the temperature limits of the nitrogen cold gas“There would have been a potential risk of overheating the thrusters and so it was a serious issue that we had to deal with,” said Henry Stone, Psyche project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
To accomplish the rest of the mission, the van-size spacecraft will rely on its new solar electric propulsion system, powered by, Oh said. The thrusters will utilize the spacecraft’s large solar arrays and “use electricity to ionize xenon gas and accelerate those charged ions through an electric field to very, very high speeds,” Oh said.The Psyche spacecraft will arrive at Mars in May 2026 and use the planet’s gravity to effectively slingshot its trajectory to Psyche.
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