NASA JPL Psyche Mission Preparation Resumes After a Year of Delay

On December 8, 2022, the Astrotech Space Operations Facility, close to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, displayed the Psyche spacecraft in a clean room. Engineers and technicians were able to prepare the spacecraft for its 2023 launch by turning it on and connecting it to ground support equipment.

Astrotech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California continue monitoring and communicating with spacecraft systems. The Psyche project intends to launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in October 2023 after delaying its launch for a year to finish critical testing.

The Psyche spacecraft is equipped with NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) technology demonstration, which tests high-data-rate laser communications. The sun shade for DSOC is the silver-colored cylinder in the picture, and the aperture cover for the DSOC payload is the gold blanketing.

Psyche's Delay

The unique, metal-rich Psyche asteroid in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is the spacecraft's target. The asteroid could be a fragment of the core of a planetesimal, which is the basic component of the rocky planets in our solar system. A collection of instruments will be used to study Psyche, including magnetometers, multispectral cameras, and gamma-ray and neutron spectrometers (GRNS). The photo depicts the tips of the two black protrusions at the spacecraft's far end as the magnetometer and GRNS sensors.

The spacecraft's high-gain antenna, which will allow it to communicate with Earth, is also visible. Last year, NASA said that they did not have enough time to complete the necessary testing for its final launch period last year, which ended on October 11, due to the late delivery of the spacecraft's flight software and testing equipment. The mission team needs more time to ensure that the software will work properly while in flight.

In 2017, NASA chose Psyche to be a part of its Discovery Program, a series of low-cost, competitive missions with a single principal investigator in charge. The agency is assembling an independent assessment team to evaluate the Discovery Program's and the project's future.

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is shown in a clean room on Dec. 8, 2022, at Astrotech Space Operations Facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

(Photo: NASA)
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is shown in a clean room on Dec. 8, 2022, at Astrotech Space Operations Facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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'One-of-a-Psyche'

The independent assessment team, which typically consists of industry, government, and academic experts, will look at possible next-step options, including estimated costs. The agency's Discovery Program and planetary science portfolio will also be considered. A journey to a one-of-a-kind metal-rich asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter is the goal of the Psyche mission. The fact that the asteroid Psyche appears to be the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet, one of our solar system's building blocks, is what sets it apart.

Scientists have hypothesized that metallic cores exist deep within the rocky terrestrial planets, including Earth, but these cores are too far below the planets' rocky mantles and crusts to be reached. Psyche provides a unique window into the violent history of collisions and accretion that led to terrestrial planets' formation because we cannot see or measure the Earth's core directly.

Arizona State University is in charge of the mission. The management, operation, and navigation of missions are the responsibility of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Maxar (formerly SSL) will construct the solar-electric propulsion chassis for the spacecraft, carrying an imager, magnetometer, and gamma-ray spectrometer as its payload.