Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
As the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft is getting ready to head back home carrying with it pieces of an asteroid called Bennu, NASA is already hard at work trying to prep the next exploratory mission of an asteroid.
Psyche is how this mission is called, and its target is a namesake asteroid orbiting the Sun in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Apparently, this is a special chunk of space debris, as it is probably not made of ice and rock, but of iron and nickel.
That might not be such a big deal, but scientists have a theory that Psyche could actually be the core of an early planet that somehow lost its outer layers. If so, its study could lead to a better understanding of how our and other planets were formed.
As for the orbiter that will survey the asteroid, it is already in the final testing stages at NASA, and after getting clearance on its science instruments and engineering systems, it's getting ready to start assembly.
“It’s really the final phase, when all of the puzzle pieces are coming together and we’re getting on the rocket. This is the most intense part of everything that happens on the ground,” said Arizona State University’s Lindy Elkins-Tanton, who as principal investigator for Psyche leads the mission.
“The fact that we can still make this happen and we’re overcoming our challenges feels near-miraculous,” Elkins-Tanton said. “And it’s also an incredible gift to keep us all focused and moving forward in a difficult time. So reaching this milestone has special meaning – not just for this project that we’ve been working on for a decade, but also because of what’s been happening more recently in all of our lives.”
The launch is scheduled for August 2022. The ship will depart Earth and head for Mars, where it will perform a gravity-assist turn in May 2023. It will not reach the asteroid before early 2026, and once there, it will spend 21 months surveying it.
That might not be such a big deal, but scientists have a theory that Psyche could actually be the core of an early planet that somehow lost its outer layers. If so, its study could lead to a better understanding of how our and other planets were formed.
As for the orbiter that will survey the asteroid, it is already in the final testing stages at NASA, and after getting clearance on its science instruments and engineering systems, it's getting ready to start assembly.
“It’s really the final phase, when all of the puzzle pieces are coming together and we’re getting on the rocket. This is the most intense part of everything that happens on the ground,” said Arizona State University’s Lindy Elkins-Tanton, who as principal investigator for Psyche leads the mission.
“The fact that we can still make this happen and we’re overcoming our challenges feels near-miraculous,” Elkins-Tanton said. “And it’s also an incredible gift to keep us all focused and moving forward in a difficult time. So reaching this milestone has special meaning – not just for this project that we’ve been working on for a decade, but also because of what’s been happening more recently in all of our lives.”
The launch is scheduled for August 2022. The ship will depart Earth and head for Mars, where it will perform a gravity-assist turn in May 2023. It will not reach the asteroid before early 2026, and once there, it will spend 21 months surveying it.
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