NASA Psyche Asteroid Mission Will Go Forward
NASA’s Psyche mission will explore a unique metallic asteroid orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter. The asteroid, likely made largely of nickel-iron metal mixed with rock, could contain metal from the core of a planetesimal (the building block of an early rocky planet) and may offer a unique window into the violent history of collisions and accretion that created the terrestrial planets like Earth. Credit: NASA
The mission team continues to complete testing of the spacecraft’s flight software in preparation for the 2023 launch date.
On Friday, October 29,
Psyche missed its planned 2022 launch period earlier this year as a result of mission development problems, leading to an internal review of whether the mission would be able to overcome these issues to successfully launch in 2023.
This continuation/termination review was informed by a project-proposed mission replan and a separate independent review, commissioned in June by NASA and the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (
This artist’s concept, updated as of June 2020, depicts NASA’s Psyche spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
The independent review board is still finalizing its report, which, along with NASA’s response, will be shared publicly once complete.
In preparation for the 2023 launch date, the mission team continues to complete…
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