After being delayed by a year because the spacecraft was not ready to make its annual launch window, Psyche was delayed another week due to new data being found that could have made the spacecraft’s thrusters overheat and be damaged. With those issues solved, the spacecraft can now begin its journey to an asteroid that has some rather interesting characteristics.
Believed to be made of metal, the asteroid cold actually be a remnant of a planet that had its mantel stripped away during the early formation of the solar system. Similar to our solid core here on Earth, there actually could be a lot of similarities between our’s and Psyche. And because we know how to fly in space, it’s actually much easier to fly to Psyche than dig down to our own core.
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NASA testing several hypothesis about Psyche
Psyche is a great example of the scientific theory in the real world. From everything scientists have studied from observing it, they believe that it is made out of metal but they aren’t 100%. So one of the items Psyche will be attempting to do is determine what its asteroid is made out of. Sadly no sample return is planned but if it is all metal, NASA, or another agency or a private company, might set its eyes on it for future missions.
Some other items Psyche will study will be if it still has a magnetic field, that will actually be one of the first items it will look for. As well as study its gravity and take some photos.
Tagging along Psyche is NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communication tech demonstration mission. I talked in detail about this in out latest YouTube video with the mission’s manager, but its a rather cool addition.
DSOC will test NASA’s ability to use lasers to communicate with the Psyche spacecraft as it moves in its orbit near Mars. NASA has previously tested this technology on the ISS and in the Moon’s orbit but this is the first time NASA will attempt to track the spacecraft as it moves in its orbit.
While DSOC won’t allow us to communicate any faster with our spacecrafts as it will be similar to the current technology, radio waves. DSOC will allow NASA to have a lot more bandwidth allowing for more science, photos, and maybe even video to be streamed to Earth at once.
Over the next year DSOC’s mission will be the big item to watch as they start testing communicating with Earth. Psyche’s mission has some time before we’ll see any major updates format. By the time it arrives at the Psyche asteroid, the articles about it might be fully written by AI (for my own job I hope not).
