Psyche
Psyche — NASA's mission, launched in 2023 and cruising to the metal asteroid 16 Psyche (arrival 2029), a possible exposed planetary core that tests whether worlds can be made largely of iron and nickel.
Key facts
Mission & specifications
Mission
- Operator
- NASA
- Launched
- October 13, 2023
- Status
- Active
Trajectory
- Current speed
- 27.2 km/s
- Distance from the Sun
- 1.52 AU
- Distance from Earth
- 2.03 AU
- Distance from Mars
- 0.224 AU
Cost & funding
- Program cost
- $1.20 × 10⁹ USD
Mission
Psyche is a NASA mission to a genuinely strange destination: an asteroid that appears to be made largely of metal. Most asteroids are rock or ice, but 16 Psyche — a body about 220 kilometres across orbiting in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter — seems to be rich in iron and nickel. One leading idea is that it is an exposed planetary core, the metal heart of a small world whose rocky outer layers were stripped away by ancient collisions. If so, Psyche offers a way to study something we can never reach directly: the cores of planets like Earth, buried thousands of kilometres beneath our feet. The spacecraft launched on 13 October 2023 and is cruising toward the asteroid, using a flyby of Mars in 2026 to bend its path and reach Psyche in 2029. It is driven by efficient solar-electric thrusters, whose faint blue ion beams push it gently but continuously through space. Once in orbit around the asteroid, Psyche will spend more than two years mapping its surface, measuring its gravity and magnetic field, and determining what it is actually made of. The mission also carried a NASA technology experiment that, on the way out, demonstrated high-rate laser communication across deep space for the first time. Psyche is currently en route to its metal world.
- 2023Launch toward 16 PsycheLaunch
Psyche sets off on a six-year cruise to the metal asteroid, driven by ion thrusters.
- 2026Mars gravity assistFlyby
Psyche swings past Mars to bend its path toward the asteroid belt.
- 2029Arrival at the metal world (planned)Arrival
Psyche is planned to enter orbit around 16 Psyche and begin mapping its strange metallic surface.
Images
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