Named after its interplanetary target, the $985 million mission is intended to help scientists determine whether the 140-mile-wide asteroid -- which varies between 235 million and 309 million miles away -- formed like Earth.

The Psyche spacecraft, at 10 feet-by-8 feet, is scheduled to lift off Oct. 5 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. That will accelerate the probe to the speed it needs to escape the gravity wells of Earth and the sun.

Then, the sophisticated space probe will start one of its four Hall-effect thrusters to accelerate toward its final destination.

Called ion propulsion, its technology involves using solar electrical power to generate electromagnetic fields for charged xenon gas.

Essentially, the electricity from the solar panels is used to convert the xenon gas to xenon ions, which are expelled to provide a very low thrust. The engines will run one at a time, for two years.

JPL manages mission
Led by Arizona State University. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is responsible for mission management, operations and navigation.

The spacecraft's solar-electric propulsion chassis was built by Maxar, with a payload that includes an imager, magnetometer and a gamma-ray spectrometer.

As part of its mission, Psyche will gather topographical and chemical composition data, looking for evidence of a magnetic field. Planetologists believe Psyche may still have one.

The most important mission goal is to establish how planets like Earth could be the result of overwhelming numbers of primordial matter collisions and debris accumulation over eons.

NASA officials were so excited by Psyche's prospects that they showed off the spacecraft last week at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility in Titusville, Fla., not far from the space center.

Source: United Press International

Related Links
Psyche at ASU
Asteroid and Comet Mission News, Science and Technology