SpaceX Launches NASA's Psyche Spacecraft Heading To The Metal Asteroid
Keneci News @kenecichannel
Psyche spacecraft lifted off at 1419 UTC(on Oct. 13) atop SpaceX's triple-booster Falcon Heavy rocket, from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). The NASA probe will now travel six years and ~3.5 billion kilometers to a metallic space rock(officially designated 16 Psyche) currently orbiting the Sun in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
In just under 2.5 minutes into liftoff, Falcon Heavy’s side boosters cut off their engines, detached from the central core stage, and headed back to Florida's Space Coast to perform simultaneous landings. And about four minutes after liftoff, Heavy’s core booster shut down its first-stage engines and separated from the rocket's second stage, which was tasked with carrying Psyche the rest of the way to orbital escape velocity.
Falcon Heavy’s side boosters began their landing burns eight minutes after liftoff, touching down at SpaceX’s Landing Zones 1 and 2, several miles downrange of Pad 39A, and sending four successive sonic booms echoing for miles across the Space Coast. The core booster careened to its destructive fate in the depths of the sea. (Maximum fuel was allotted to ensure Psyche's nominal trajectory, hence there was no attempt to land the core booster on one of SpaceX's autonomous drone ships in the Atlantic Ocean).
The first burn of Falcon Heavy’s second stage ended about 8.5 minutes after launch (T+00:08:26). A second, two-minute burn occurred around T+00:54:00, which was followed by spacecraft separation at T+01:02:09.
Psyche will now spend about an hour unfolding and deploying its massive solar arrays, which cover 75 square meters, and together span the length of a tennis court. It is NASA's first interplanetary spacecraft equipped with Hall-effect thrusters. The electric propulsion system is completely dependent on the ability of the probe's arrays to harness solar energy.
The spacecraft is headed for 16 Psyche. It won't rendezvous with the rock until July 2029. On the way, the probe will steal some of Mars' gravitational energy when it performs a flyby of the Red Planet for a velocity boost in May 2026. After flying for 3.5 billion km, it will enter orbit around its target, where it will spend about a month undergoing systems checks and calibrations to prepare to begin its operational mission.
Beginning in August 2029, Psyche will spend 21 months mapping and analyzing the asteroid's surface from multiple orbits.
During a Wednesday briefing, Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA's science mission directorate, said that of nine metal-rich asteroids known to exist in our solar system, this is the biggest. "Psyche is by far the largest, and that's why we want to go to it," he said, "because the smaller ones are more likely to have been changed by things impacting them, whereas the big one, we think, is going to be completely unchanged."
According to NASA’s website, at its widest, the asteroid measures 280 km across and 232 km long. Scientists have been able to determine that 16 Psyche's surface is covered mostly in nickel and iron. It is believed to be an ancient protoplanetary core, and researchers hope an up-close examination of the metal space rock could teach us more about planet formation.
"We hope that by studying the asteroid, we'll learn more about the iron core of other planets in our solar system," Fox said. Those planets include "the most important planet to us — the one we live on."
WATCH SpaceX launch of Psyche spacecraft.