The psyche spacecraft completed its journey from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida First, it went to March Air Force reserve base, about 55 miles southeast of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Riverside County, California, and then flew on the C-17 Globemaster III to the launch and Landing Facility (formerly the Space Shuttle Landing Facility), where the staff unloaded the spacecraft. In the next three months, additional preparations will be made for the spacecraft before it is launched by SpaceX Falcon heavy rocket on August 1, 2022.
The psyche spacecraft will travel about 1.5 billion miles (2.4 billion kilometers) using solar powered electric thrusters and will rendezvous with an asteroid of the same name in 2026. This will make it the first spacecraft to use Hall effect thrusters outside lunar orbit. This thruster technology captures electrons in a magnetic field and uses them to ionize airborne propellant, consuming much less propellant than equivalent chemical rockets. Psyche also carries three scientific instruments: an imager, a magnetometer and a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer.
The unique, metal rich psyche asteroid may be part of the core of Xingzi, which is part of the rocky planets in our solar system. Knowing more about this asteroid can tell us more about how our own planets formed and help answer basic questions about the earth's own metal core and the formation of our solar system.
The launch of psyche will include two secondary payloads, NASA's deep space optical communication (DSOC) technology demonstration, which is attached to the spacecraft as a separate experiment, and the Janus spacecraft. DSOC will conduct the agency's first demonstration of optical communication outside the Earth Moon system and will use lasers to send data at a higher rate than typical spacecraft radio communication. Janus is two small spacecraft that will study two different double asteroids (two asteroids orbiting each other) to understand the formation and evolution of these objects.
The psyche mission is led by Arizona State University. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of technology in Pasadena, California, and is responsible for overall mission management, systems engineering, integration and testing, and mission operations. Maxar technologies, based in Palo Alto, California, provides a high-power solar electric propulsion spacecraft chassis. NASA's launch service program (LSP) in Kennedy is managing the launch. Psyche will be the 14th mission in the agency's discovery plan and the 100th major mission of LSP. Many international, University and business partners are part of the psyche team.