Consider it the "mother of all tests."

This summer, the PACE spacecraft (short for Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) completed a critical phase of its launch journey: the thermal vacuum test (TVAC), where it was subjected to extreme temperatures and pressures in a specialized chamber at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The objective? To verify the performance of the satellite once it's launched and operational.

"This is the best way to simulate what PACE will experience in space," said Craig Stevens, spacecraft systems lead.

The safe landing of the probe is one of the most difficult challenges in Mars exploration, and the Mars supersonic parachute is extremely important for this process. To date, all the successful Mars exploration missions have used disk-gap-band (DGB) parachutes. However, the DGB parachute with the highest diameter of 21.35 m cannot be further used for future Mars exploration missions with higher loads.

Next-generation supersonic parachutes conducted by NASA, such as disksail parachutes, are alternatives to DGB parachutes. Disksail parachutes have larger porous gaps and smaller porous seams on the canopy surface than DGB parachutes. However, there are few studies on the aerodynamic characteristics of supersonic parachutes with different geometric porosity structures and locations.

Hence, the influence mechanism of porous seams or gaps and their locations on the performance of supersonic parachute systems in Martian atmospheric conditions remains unclear.

Bound for a metal-rich asteroid of the same name, the Psyche mission is targeting Oct. 5 to launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The spacecraft's solar arrays are folded like an envelope into their stowed position. Xenon gas—fuel for the journey to the asteroid belt—is loaded.

International regulations on space debris mitigation set a limit on how long a satellite should linger in orbit once its mission is complete—it mustn't be longer than 25 years.