Photo credit: NASA | Isaac Watson
It’s official, the NASA Psyche spacecraft is undergoing final preparations for its launch in August. It was moved into the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida before technicians rotated it to the vertical position, and started the final steps to prepare the spacecraft for launch, which involves reinstalling solar arrays, loading propellants, as well as encapsulating the spacecraft inside payload fairings.
NASA is targeting an August 1, 2022 launch where it will sit atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. When Psyche arrives at the asteroid in 2026, it will spend 21-months orbiting the metallic rocky body, all the while mapping and gathering data to provide researchers with insight on how planets with a metal core formed. It may be a while until a spacecraft, like OSIRIS-REx, can land on the asteroid.
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Arizona State University leads the Psyche mission. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, is responsible for the mission’s overall management, system engineering, integration and test, and mission operations,” said the agency.
