NASA’s spacecraft, Psyche, is getting ready for its first-ever mission to explore a metal-rich asteroid. The mission, with an estimated value of about $10 billion, is set to launch at 21:16 (GMT+7) on October 12th from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. After traveling approximately 3.5 billion kilometers, the spacecraft will reach its destination, the asteroid 16 Psyche, located at the edge of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter in 2029.
Simulated spacecraft approaching the Psyche asteroid. Photo: NASA
Once it arrives, scientists will study this metal-rich asteroid, which is different from the icy and rocky celestial bodies explored in the past. This mission aims to shed light on the formation processes of terrestrial planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars in the solar system.
Discovered in 1852, Psyche is considered one of the most intriguing objects in the main asteroid belt. Scientists believe it might be the exposed metallic core of a protoplanet that failed to develop into a full-fledged planet due to collisions with larger celestial objects during the early formation of the solar system, about 4.5 billion years ago. The study of this 279 km-wide, potato-shaped asteroid could reveal insights into the early solar system and provide information about Earth’s inaccessible iron core.
What makes Psyche even more fascinating is its composition. While terrestrial planets in the inner solar system contain various iron oxides, Psyche appears to lack these chemical compounds. This raises questions about the nature of its formation and whether it followed a different process than the one responsible for the creation of Earth.
A crucial part of the Psyche mission is getting the spacecraft to the distant asteroid and placing it in a position for scientific instruments to operate. This will be achieved through a combination of solar electric propulsion, which uses solar panels to collect energy, and Hall effect thrusters, which accelerate ions from xenon fuel. The spacecraft will use these engines to fly around Mars and gain gravitational assists in 2026 before reaching Psyche in 2029. Once there, it will orbit the asteroid at a distance of about 700 km, gradually lowering its altitude to study various features of the asteroid’s surface.
The mission’s first orbit cycle (A) will last 56 days, during which the spacecraft will use a magnetometer to search for an ancient magnetic field on Psyche. Simultaneously, the spacecraft’s multispectral imager will assess the asteroid’s surface topography. This equipment will continue to operate as the spacecraft moves closer to the asteroid, especially in the following two cycles (B1 and B2), each lasting 192 days.
In the lengthy C cycle of 100 days, Psyche’s remote sensing system will be employed to understand the asteroid’s gravitational influence and transmit data back to Earth while receiving instructions from the mission control team via radio waves. This will enable scientists to gain a deeper understanding of the asteroid’s mass, density, and composition. The final cycle, D, also lasting 100 days, will see Psyche deploying a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer to investigate the asteroid’s abundance of various chemical elements. This extensive mission is expected to provide valuable insights into the mysteries of our solar system.