NASA Psyche Mission Metal Asteroid Launch
NASA’s Psyche mission less than 30 days to go before the opening of its launch period, which runs from Thursday, Oct. 5-25, and what the spacecraft learns from the metal-rich asteroid may tell us more about how planets form. Currently, its solar arrays are folded like an envelope into their stowed position while xenon gas is loaded.



All four of its thrusters have passed their final tests and engineers confirmed the gigantic high-gain antenna is set to transmit data. Its four science instruments – a multispectral imager, magnetometer, and gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer – are set to investigate asteroid Psyche. The next two weeks will see NASA technicians encapsulating the spacecraft in its payload fairing, or the cone at the top of the rocket, and the spacecraft will be transported to SpaceX facilities at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It’s set to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at 10:38 a.m. EDT on Oct. 5.

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These missions take so many people and so much meticulous, rigorous, personally driven work. I am ready to be ecstatic. We all are, but we are not ecstatic yet. Let’s launch and establish communications – then we can scream, jump, and hug each other!,” said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, principal investigator for Psyche at Arizona State University.

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