{"id":10533,"date":"2022-05-06T01:57:29","date_gmt":"2022-05-05T17:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/psyche-asteroid-explorer-arrives-at-kennedy-space-center-for-launch-preps\/"},"modified":"2022-05-06T01:57:29","modified_gmt":"2022-05-05T17:57:29","slug":"psyche-asteroid-explorer-arrives-at-kennedy-space-center-for-launch-preps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/psyche-asteroid-explorer-arrives-at-kennedy-space-center-for-launch-preps\/","title":{"rendered":"Psyche asteroid explorer arrives at Kennedy Space Center for launch preps"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
NASA\u2019s Psyche spacecraft inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: NASA\/Isaac Watson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A U.S. military cargo plane delivered NASA\u2019s Psyche spacecraft from California to the Kennedy Space Center last week, starting a three-month campaign to ready the asteroid explorer for liftoff on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in August.<\/p>\n

The launch preparations at Kennedy will include loading of more than a ton of xenon gas into the Psyche spacecraft, followed by encapsulation of the probe inside SpaceX\u2019s payload fairing before rolling out to pad 39A for integration with a Falcon Heavy launcher.<\/p>\n

\u201cShipping to the launch site feels like the home stretch is kind of coming, and it certainly feels that way on Psyche,\u201d said Brian Bone, the lead engineer on Psyche\u2019s assembly, test, and launch operations team.<\/p>\n

The xenon will fuel the spacecraft\u2019s electric propulsion system, a set of four high-efficiency electric thrusters to guide Psyche from Earth to its namesake asteroid destination.<\/p>\n

The robotic mission will reach the asteroid Psyche in January 2026, then enter a series of orbits at different distances to map the unexplored world. Psyche, the asteroid, has an irregular shape and has an average diameter of about 140 miles (226 kilometers). It is located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and made mostly of nickel and iron metals.<\/p>\n

The Psyche spacecraft\u2019s launch period opens Aug. 1, with liftoff from pad 39A on that day timed for 2:26 p.m. EDT (1826 GMT). The launch will be the first flight of SpaceX\u2019s powerful triple-core Falcon Heavy rocket for NASA.<\/p>\n

The mission\u2019s launch period extends several weeks, and is scheduled to allow the Psyche spacecraft to reach Mars in May 2023 for a flyby maneuver, using the planet\u2019s gravity to slingshot toward the asteroid belt.<\/p>\n

The delivery of the Psyche spacecraft to the Florida launch base follows months of testing at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The tests subjected the probe to the extreme cold temperatures and the airless environment of deep space, and ensured the spacecraft can withstand the shaking, acoustics, and shock forces it will encounter during launch.<\/p>\n

With those tests complete, engineers placed the spacecraft in an environmentally controlled shipping container and drove it from JPL to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, California, where a military flight crew loaded it into a C-17 transport plane for the cross-country journey to Florida.<\/p>\n

After touching down at the Launch and Landing Facility at Kennedy Friday afternoon, Psyche was moved to the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, where engineers removed the spacecraft from its shipping crate earlier this week.<\/p>\n

The transport of the Psyche spacecraft to Florida was \u201cexceptionally smooth,\u201d Bone said in an interview with Spaceflight Now.<\/p>\n

Psyche was assembled and tested at JPL, and Maxar Technologies, a builder of commercial communications satellites, provided the spacecraft\u2019s chassis, propulsion system, and solar panels. JPL, with extensive experience in deep space operations, provided Psyche\u2019s flight computer, software, and parts of the communications and power systems.<\/p>\n

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A U.S. military C-17 cargo plane delivered the Psyche spacecraft to the Kennedy Space Center on April 29. Credit: NASA\/Kim Shiflett<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the first tasks for the Psyche team will be testing to make the spacecraft was not damaged during shipment to Florida.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn parallel the baseline testing, we\u2019re doing alignments and making sure that nothing shifted or moved throughout the dynamics  <\/span>test campaign and the transit here to KSC,\u201d Bone said.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft processing team will also load new software on Psyche\u2019s flight computer, and complete an end-to-end verification test with NASA\u2019s Deep Space Network, which will track and communicate with the probe after launch.<\/p>\n

Engineers will install the spacecraft\u2019s power-generating solar panels, then fill Psyche\u2019s seven xenon tanks with more than 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of fuel, Bone said. Nitrogen gas will also be loaded into the spacecraft for cold gas jets used for pointing, or attitude control.<\/p>\n

The xenon gas will be loaded into the spacecraft over the course of about three weeks, beginning in early June, according to Bone. Xenon will fuel Psyche\u2019s four plasma engines, which will combine electricity with xenon to produce low levels of thrust. Electric propulsion is more efficient than conventional rocket engines, requiring less fuel for large velocity changes \u2014 therefore, orbit adjustments \u2014 than other common spacecraft propellants, like hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, highly toxic but stable liquids that form a hypergolic mixture and ignite upon contact with one another.<\/p>\n

Electric thrusters can run for weeks or months at a time, while less efficient, higher-thrust rocket engines fire for seconds or minutes.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another benefit of electric propulsion from the perspective of the spacecraft processing team.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt removes a huge hazard,\u201d Bone said. \u201cThe biggest benefit is we just don\u2019t have to worry about the hazardous operations of fueling with the hypergols. It\u2019s easy. If there\u2019s a leak, it\u2019s inert. There\u2019s not enough that it would be in an asphyxiant. We have a large volume area, so we\u2019re in a very safe environment. So that just makes life tremendously easier.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can do other things on the spacecraft as we\u2019re loading the propellant if we need to, minor things. There are no keep out zones. You don\u2019t have to be specially trained. You don\u2019t need medical certifications because you\u2019re not using a SCAPE (Self Contained Atmospheric Protective Ensemble) suit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teams at Kennedy will also install Psyche\u2019s deep space transponder, part of its communications system, after it needed to be removed from the spacecraft at JPL for troubleshooting.<\/p>\n

Two small spacecraft will hitch a ride to space with Psyche. NASA\u2019s twin Janus probes, each weighing just 80 pounds (36 kilograms), will launch on the same Falcon Heavy rocket as Psyche, but will head off into the solar system to fly by separate asteroids.<\/p>\n

The Janus smallsats are built by Lockheed Martin and should arrive at the Kennedy Space Center in late June for integration with an adapter ring connecting Psyche with its Falcon Heavy launcher. Then the entire spacecraft stack will be encapsulated inside the Falcon Heavy payload fairing inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility.<\/p>\n

SpaceX\u2019s launch team, meanwhile, will connect the Falcon Heavy\u2019s three first stage booster cores with the rocket\u2019s upper stage. The rocket will go through a test-firing on pad 39A, then return to the hangar for connection with the Psyche and Janus spacecraft inside the payload shroud.<\/p>\n

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Artist\u2019s illustration of the Psyche spacecraft ad its destination. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Psyche carries three scientific instruments: A pair of high-resolution color cameras for 3D images of the asteroid, a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer to measure the asteroid\u2019s composition, and a magnetometer to measure the magnetic field of the asteroid.<\/p>\n

The three-and-a-half year trip to asteroid Psyche will span 1.5 billion miles (2.4 billion kilometers), and the spacecraft is designed to spend at least 21 months studying the asteroid after arrival in 2026.<\/p>\n

NASA selected Psyche as a Discovery-class interplanetary mission in 2017, alongside the Lucy asteroid explorer, which launched last year. The Psyche mission\u2019s total cost is nearly $1 billion, including development, launch services, and operations.<\/p>\n

Supply chain difficulties and the COVID-19 pandemic added pressure to Psyche\u2019s development team to keep the mission on track for launch this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just made things drag out longer, made things show up at times when they were maybe not optimal for the schedule,\u201d Bone said. \u201cSo we did a lot of reworking and a lot of rescheduling and a lot of finding opportunities to test items on second shifts, to make sure we kept our schedule intact, and we were very successful in doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA\u2019s Psyche spacecraft inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: NASA\/Isaac Watson A U.S. military cargo plane delivered NASA\u2019s Psyche spacecraft from California to the Kennedy Space Center last week, starting a three-month campaign to ready the asteroid explorer for liftoff on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in […]<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-10533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10533"}],"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=10533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}