![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Psyche-10.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
The Falcon Heavy rocket\u2019s two side boosters returned to Cape Canaveral for landing after sending NASA\u2019s Psyche spacecraft on its way into deep space.<\/p>\n
Credit:
\n Trevor Mahlmann\/Ars Technica<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
After separation of the reusable side boosters, Falcon Heavy\u2019s core stage throttled up to burn another minute-and-a-half. Then an upper stage released from the core stage, which wasn\u2019t recovered, taking over for two engine firings to accelerate the Psyche spacecraft with enough velocity to escape the grip of Earth\u2019s gravity. The Psyche spacecraft separated from the rocket about an hour after liftoff, then extended its power-generating solar arrays to a span of 81 feet (about 25 meters) end to end. Ground controllers at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California established a stable communication link with Psyche to verify all\u2019s good with the spacecraft.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe said \u2018goodbye\u2019 to our spacecraft, the center of so many work lives for so many years\u2014thousands of people and a decade,\u201d said Elkins-Tanton in a statement. \u201cBut it\u2019s really not a finish line; it\u2019s a starting line for the next marathon. Our spacecraft is off to meet our asteroid, and we\u2019ll fill another gap in our knowledge\u2013and color in another kind of world in our solar system.\u201d<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
Visiting an unknown object<\/h2>\n
The Psyche mission will take a circuitous route toward its asteroid objective. After its initial boost into space on the Falcon Heavy rocket, the spacecraft will switch on electric thrusters to continually reshape its orbit around the Sun.<\/p>\n
This will be the first time this particular kind of electric engine, called a Hall effect thruster, has flown on a deep space mission. The Psyche spacecraft has four of these thrusters, supplied by a Russian company. Each of the propulsion units generate just 250 milli-newtons of thrust, roughly equivalent to the weight of three quarters. But they can operate for months at a time, and over the course of a multi-year cruise, these thrusters provide a more efficient means of propulsion than conventional rockets.<\/p>\n
The spacecraft, built by Maxar Technologies in partnership with JPL, will swing by Mars in 2026 for a gravity-assist maneuver to slingshot into the asteroid belt, setting up for a final approach to asteroid Psyche in 2029. If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will settle into its first orbit around Psyche in August of that year.<\/p>\n NASA\u2019s Psyche spacecraft takes a spiral path to the asteroid Psyche, as depicted in this graphic that shows the path from above the plane of the planets, labeled with key milestones of the prime mission.<\/p>\n Credit: Psyche, the asteroid, is an enigma. Its shape, color, and appearance are a mystery.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that its density is very high,\u201d Elkins-Tanton said. \u201cWe know the shape of the reflected light off of its surface, and the way radar interacts with it, so we\u2019re quite confident that it is largely made of metal, along with something else. That something else might be rock, it might be sulfur-based, it might be carbon-based. We don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n Of the approximately 1 million asteroids discovered so far, scientists say only nine have a metal-rich signature like Psyche. So far, all of the asteroids explored close up have been rocky worlds. NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx mission, one of the agency\u2019s most recent asteroid explorers, recently returned samples from Bennu, a world brimming with carbon-based organic molecules, the building blocks of life.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n Scientists expect Psyche to be as different from Bennu as Mars from the Moon.<\/p>\n Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis discovered Psyche in 1852 and named it for the goddess of the soul in ancient Greek mythology. Psyche was the 16th asteroid to be discovered and ranks among the dozen most massive objects in the asteroid belt. The best data from Earth-based observations indicate that Psyche is elongated in shape, somewhat like a potato, with metal comprising 30 to 60 percent of its volume.<\/p>\n \u201cPsyche, for at least a few decades, has been something that people wondered about,\u201d said Ben Weiss, the Psyche mission\u2019s deputy principal investigator from MIT. \u201cThey knew about its density, and it\u2019s been kind of a \u2018terra incognita\u2019 and a place of excitement where everyone could speculate about what a new body would be like that\u2019s so dense.\u201d<\/p>\n This is one artist\u2019s illustration of what asteroid Psyche may look like.<\/p>\n Credit: But scientists can dream. Lab experiments suggest impact craters into metal look different from the craters on the Moon or Mars. Molten metal splashed off the surface during a collision with another asteroid could have frozen into spires or spikes. Pulverized material may have also settled onto the surface of Psyche, creating a hard-to-imagine layer of metallic sand.<\/p>\n Psyche started its life as a scorching-hot world of melted metal at the formation of the Solar System. As it cooled, the metal contracted and could have created escarpments, or dramatic cliffs, with rift-like fissures where sulfur-rich liquid could have seeped to the surface through volcanic eruptions.<\/p>\n \u201cSo will we see spiky metal craters, huge cliffs?\u201d Elkins-Tanton asked. \u201cWill we see old, eroded lava flows that would be greenish-yellow from their sulfur content? This is our scientifically motivated idea, almost certain to be completely wrong. It\u2019s going to surprise us when we get there. We\u2019re going to find out that our basic scientific understanding is going to be updated, and that\u2019s why we need to go.\u201d<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re dying to see what a metal world looks like,\u201d Weiss said. \u201cWhat does a volcano look like? What does a crack look like? What does a crater look like? What does a lava flow look like?\u201d<\/p>\n What scientists find at Psyche has important implications for asteroid mining, an ambition embraced by some space advocates and entrepreneurs, who envision a future where materials extracted from planetary bodies could satisfy humanity\u2019s appetite for precious metals like iron, nickel, platinum, cobalt, and gold.<\/p>\n The mission\u2019s results could yield findings about how much of these materials are present at Psyche, and how accessible they might be for mining. Any attempt to actually extract metals from Psyche, or a similar asteroid, is still a long way from reality. <\/p>\n The Psyche spacecraft carries three science instruments to help answer these questions. One of these instruments is a pair of identical multispectral color cameras to survey the asteroid\u2019s surface and create 3D topography maps. A gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer will determine which chemical elements make up the asteroid\u2019s surface, and a magnetometer will look for evidence of an ancient magnetic field at Psyche.<\/p>\n Once it is at the asteroid, the Psyche spacecraft will propel itself into four different orbits, each optimized for a different type of scientific observation. The probe will eventually get as close as 47 miles (75 kilometers) from the asteroid to enable composition measurements with its spectrometers.<\/p>\n One of the two solar arrays on the Psyche spacecraft is seen extended during a ground test earlier this year.<\/p>\n Credit: Another kind of instrument is riding along with Psyche. NASA\u2019s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) payload will test a laser data link between the spacecraft and Earth during the mission\u2019s transit out to Psyche.<\/p>\n Laser communication isn\u2019t new. SpaceX\u2019s Starlink Internet satellites use laser links to relay broadband signals between one another in space. But NASA wants to extend laser communications into deep space to take advantage of higher data transfer rates than feasible with radio.<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n \u201cRadio waves do have limitations, so our interest, for many applications, is to look at optical,\u201d said Jeff Volosin, NASA\u2019s program manager for space communications and navigation. \u201cJust like higher bandwidth Internet on Earth, we\u2019re looking to increase the speed at which we can get data down to Earth, and we\u2019re looking to increase the amount of data we can get down to Earth, and that has a lot of advantages to us.\u201d<\/p>\n Laser communications could allow future missions to transmit high-definition video from the Moon or more distant locations. Psyche will prove the fundamental technology needed to make that possible, and it\u2019s the first time this has been tried from beyond the Moon.<\/p>\n The DSOC laser terminal mounted to the side of the Psyche spacecraft will get to work within a few weeks of launch. The first challenge will be to lock on to laser telescopes in California, one designed to transmit to Psyche, and another to receive signals from the spacecraft\u2019s near-infrared laser.<\/p>\n \u201cThese laser beams are modulated, which means they\u2019re flashing on and off, and those flashes are timed, and the timing of those flashes is what encodes the information that\u2019s carried over these laser beams,\u201d said Abi Biswas, DSOC\u2019s project technologist at JPL.<\/p>\n DSOC\u2019s experiment will run during the first two years of Psyche\u2019s voyage, when the spacecraft reaches distances 1,000 times farther than the Moon.<\/p>\n \u201cThis huge increase in distance brings new challenges,\u201d Biswas said. \u201cForemost among these challenges is pointing a narrow laser beam back to the ground receiving station. This can be imagined as trying to hit a dime from a mile away while the dime is moving. Once you achieve that feat, the signal that is received is still very weak and therefore requires very sensitive detectors and processing electronics which can take that signal and extract information that\u2019s encoded in it.\u201d<\/p>\n ,<\/p>\n The Psyche mission was supposed to launch last year, but NASA grounded the spacecraft after it became clear it wasn\u2019t ready to fly. Managers blamed a blend of workforce issues and software testing woes for the delay.<\/p>\n But the delay cost NASA and means the spacecraft will get to asteroid Psyche three years later than originally planned. Before the rescheduling of the launch to 2023, the Psyche mission was estimated to cost $985 million. That has now increased to $1.23 billion, according to a NASA spokesperson.<\/p>\n If you add the $206 million cost of the DSOC experiment, the entire cost of Psyche totals more than $1.4 billion.<\/p>\n Psyche\u2019s launch was recently delayed again, this time for a week, to resolve a last-minute concern with the spacecraft\u2019s cold gas thrusters. Ground testing of spare thrusters showed they were at risk of overheating, so engineers late last month decided to modify Psyche\u2019s control parameters to reduce the load on the cold gas jets, which will be first used to stabilize the spacecraft after deployment from the Falcon Heavy rocket. Essentially, this means the probe will turn more slowly in space when under the control of the thrusters.<\/p>\n NASA originally selected the Psyche mission for development in 2017, but Elkins-Tanton and her science team have been working on the Psyche mission concept for more than 12 years.<\/p>\n Finally, Psyche, the spacecraft, is traveling through the Solar System, and Psyche, the asteroid, is within reach.<\/p>\n Oct. 13, 2023: This story was updated after the successful launch of the Psyche mission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida\u2014A roughly 3-ton spacecraft launched Friday from NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin a six-year trip to an enigma in the asteroid belt, an unusual metallic world the size of Massachusetts that could hold clues about the formation of Earth and other rocky planets. This mission, named Psyche, will survey its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45832,"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":[4365,678,25,1084,190,1516,1563,316],"class_list":["post-45828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-asteroid","tag-falcon-heavy","tag-launch","tag-maxar","tag-nasa","tag-psyche","tag-solar-system","tag-spacex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45828"}],"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=45828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/PIA24930.width-1600.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/p>\n<\/figure>\nThe stuff of dreams<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/PIA23876medium.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/ASU<\/p>\n<\/figure>\nInstrumentation<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/KSC-20230720-PH-ILW01_0023large.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n NASA\/Isaac Watson<\/p>\n<\/figure>\nA long road to launch<\/h2>\n