{"id":10290,"date":"2023-10-11T18:10:32","date_gmt":"2023-10-11T10:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/weather-delays-launch-of-nasas-billion-dollar-psyche-mission-to-friday\/"},"modified":"2023-10-11T18:10:32","modified_gmt":"2023-10-11T10:10:32","slug":"weather-delays-launch-of-nasas-billion-dollar-psyche-mission-to-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/weather-delays-launch-of-nasas-billion-dollar-psyche-mission-to-friday\/","title":{"rendered":"Weather delays launch of NASA\u2019s billion-dollar Psyche mission to Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update 6:35 p.m. EDT:<\/strong> NASA delays launch to Friday due to weather.<\/p>\n

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The eighth Falcon Heavy to fly was raised to launch configuration overnight on Wednesday as it prepares to send the Psyche spacecraft off to the asteroid of the same name as early as Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023. Image: Adam Bernstein<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Original story:<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the exception of the weather, NASA and SpaceX said at a prelaunch news conference Wednesday everything was ready for the launch the Psyche mission at 10:16 a.m. EDT (1416 UTC) on Thursday, Oct. 12. on a seven-year mission to an asteroid of the same name.<\/p>\n

Arlena Moses, the launch weather officer with the 45th Weather Squadron, said the launch forecast for Thursday remains only 20 percent favorable for liftoff, but she said there were a couple elements that made her somewhat hopeful for a Thursday liftoff.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks right now that warm front is going to be a little north of us as we go into the first part of tomorrow morning and what that\u2019s going to kind of help us out with is that it should take a lot of the heaviest rainfall and best chances of storms north of us,\u201d Moses said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, we still will have a very unstable atmosphere, so there still may be some storms and rainfall around, probably lots of cloud cover, all of these things that we have concern for with our rocket launches and our lightning commit criteria,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Moses said that winds could pick up quickly out of the southwest of 20 to 25 miles per hour for the Thursday launch window. Looking at the 24-hour backup opportunity, there are lower winds of only 7 to 12 miles per hour and a 50 percent probability of \u2018go\u2019 weather.<\/p>\n

The launch will be the seventh mission with SpaceX for NASA\u2019s Launch Services Program (LSP) and the first using a Falcon Heavy rocket.<\/p>\n

Julianna Scheiman, SpaceX\u2019s Director of Civil Satellite Missions, said this mission will also be the first time they are flying what\u2019s called a \u201ccategory three certification\u201d mission, which she said is \u201cthe highest tier of certification one can get on a launch vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt demonstrates that the launch vehicle is ready for NASA\u2019s most important science missions,\u201d Scheiman explained. \u201cThat means Falcon Heavy has been through the wringer, whether that\u2019s design reviews, qualification testing, acceptance testing, post-flight data reviews, independent verification\/validation work. Falcon Heavy is ready and we are so excited to be supporting the Psyche mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A close-up shot of the Falcon Heavy payload fairings encasing NASA\u2019s Psyche spacecraft. It will reach its namesake asteroid by 2029. Image: Michael Cain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The spacecraft will spend the next few years making its way out to the asteroid 16 Psyche, which is one of only nine such asteroids that researchers believe to be mostly heavy metals. The billion-dollar spacecraft was hoisted into launch position early Wednesday morning out at Launch Complex 39A.<\/p>\n

On launch day, Dr. Henry Stone, the Psyche project manager at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said the spacecraft will power up about five hours before liftoff.<\/p>\n

About an hour into the flight, the Psyche spacecraft will separate from the Falcon Heavy\u2019s second stage and then the solar arrays will deploy autonomously.<\/p>\n

The vehicle will then orient towards the Sun, shifting the power from the battery to the solar panels. Then the vehicle will rotate to point the low gain antenna in an orientation that will allow for ground communication with the spacecraft. Ground teams will then send a command to Psyche to reorient again for continuous communications.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really going to be those set of operations that are going to take roughly two hours or so after separation before we are assured or have high confidence that we will have locked-in view position to get started, get actual telemetry,\u201d Stone said.<\/p>\n

Stone, as well as many across NASA, are eager to see Psyche finally launch after its delay of a year and then another week due to the need to adjust flight parameters to prevent the spacecraft\u2019s cold gas thrusters from over-heating.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to make sure we took the time and we did a week to make sure, run all of our testing and verification again, that the adjustments to those parameters would be appropriate,\u201d Stone said. \u201cThis is a huge investment, a mission like this, and we wanted to be absolutely, absolutely sure that we were ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe lost seven days of the launch window, but we discovered this asteroid in 1852 and people have been waiting a long time to see this asteroid,\u201d said Dr. Nicky Fox, NASA\u2019s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. \u201cAnd when you put all this effort into your mission, you take that extra time to make sure it\u2019s perfected. So, I think the team deserves a lot of credit for doing that work to make sure this mission is successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Psyche is expected to reach its namesake asteroid in 2029 after which it will spend about 26 month in orbit, conducting a suite of science observations regarding this unique celestial body.<\/p>\n

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The side boosters that are being used on the Falcon Heavy supporting the Psyche mission will be making their fourth launch. Following this mission, they will be used two more times: on USSF-52 and then on NASA\u2019s Europa Clipper mission to one of Jupiter\u2019s moons. Image: Adam Bernstein<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Update 6:35 p.m. EDT: NASA delays launch to Friday due to weather. The eighth Falcon Heavy to fly was raised to launch configuration overnight on Wednesday as it prepares to send the Psyche spacecraft off to the asteroid of the same name as early as Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023. Image: Adam Bernstein Original story: With […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1518,1517,1519,1183,190,1516],"class_list":["post-10290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-arizona-state-university","tag-asteroid-16-psyche","tag-asteroids","tag-jet-propulsion-laboratory","tag-nasa","tag-psyche"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}