Skip to main content

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft almost ready for launch to weird metal asteroid

There are all sorts of oddities out in the depths of our solar system, and one of the most intriguing is a strange metal asteroid called Psyche. At 140 miles across, it’s one of the largest asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and it is the only asteroid discovered to date that could be composed entirely of iron and nickel.

That makes Psyche a valuable target for research because it could teach us about how planets like Earth — which has a metal core — formed and evolved. To learn more about this unusual asteroid, NASA will soon be launching a mission, also called Psyche, to visit the asteroid and spend 21 months orbiting it.

The Psyche spacecraft sits in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The Psyche spacecraft sits in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA/Isaac Watson

With the launch of the mission scheduled for August 1 this year, using a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the Psyche spacecraft is being prepared for its liftoff and long journey. Recently, the spacecraft was moved to a special facility at Kennedy where it is being tested and made ready for its big debut.

“Since its arrival on April 29, the Psyche spacecraft has moved into the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where technicians removed it from its protective shipping container, rotated it to vertical, and have begun the final steps to prepare the spacecraft for launch,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote in an update.

“In the coming months, crews will perform a range of work including reinstalling solar arrays, reintegrating a radio, testing the telecommunications system, loading propellants, and encapsulating the spacecraft inside payload fairings before it leaves the facility and moves to the launch pad.”

The spacecraft’s huge solar arrays were deployed to their full extent in a test in March, and are necessary to provide power for the craft as its travels on its 1.5 billion-mile (2.4 billion kilometer) journey. It will travel for 3.5 years, getting a gravity boost from a flyby of Mars in 2023, with its arrival at Psyche scheduled for 2026.

NASA has released a trailer for the mission which you can watch below:

NASA's Psyche Mission to an Asteroid: Official NASA Trailer

Editors' Recommendations

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
NASA confirms ISS will host cosmonauts through 2028
The International Space Station’s solar arrays provide power for the orbiting laboratory. NASA will install a total of six new roll out solar arrays in front of the existing arrays at 1A, 2B, 3A, 3B, 4A, and 4B to augment the power. During the Aug. 24 spacewalk, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and astronaut Akihiko Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will install the modification kit on the 4A power channel, where the next new roll out solar array will be installed in 2022.

The International Space Station (ISS) looked for a while like it was about to become a little less international when the Russian space agency chief suggested last year that his country would stop sending cosmonauts to the orbital outpost “after 2024.”

Roscosmos chief Yuri Borisov made the statement in July during a period of increasing tension between the U.S. and Russia following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine five months earlier.

Read more
An old NASA spacecraft will crash to Earth on Wednesday
NASA's RHESSI spacecraft.

A retired NASA spacecraft will reenter Earth’s atmosphere on Wednesday, with some parts of the vehicle expected to crash to the planet's surface.

While most of the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) spacecraft is expected to burn up as it enters the atmosphere at high speed, some parts of the 660-pound (300-kilogram) machine are likely to survive the descent.

Read more
See highlights of the launch of the European JUICE spacecraft
ESA’s latest interplanetary mission, Juice, lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French 09:14 local time/14:14CEST on 14 April 2023 to begin its eight-year journey to Jupiter, where it will study in detail the gas giant planet’s three large ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.

An Ariane 5 rocket carrying a spacecraft bound for Jupiter's icy moons was launched from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana at around 8 a.m. ET (5 a.m. PT) on Friday, April 14, in a spectacular daytime liftoff.

The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft from the European Space Agency has a mass of 2.6 tonnes and is carrying nearly 4 tonnes of fuel. This will be the final launch of an ESA mission using an Ariane 5 rocket, manufactured by ArianeGroup, as the rocket will now be succeeded by the upcoming Ariane 6 which is designed to be cheaper to launch.

Read more