NASA’s Psyche Moves Toward Liftoff

Technicians connected NASA’s Psyche spacecraft to the payload attach fitting inside the clean room at Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville, Florida on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023. This hardware allows Psyche to connect to the top of the rocket once secured inside the protective payload fairings. Psyche will lift off on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket at 10:34 a.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 5, 2023, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Psyche spacecraft will travel nearly six years and about 2.2 billion miles (3.6 billion kilometers) to an asteroid of the same name, which is orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists believe Psyche could be part of the core of a planetesimal, likely made of iron-nickel metal, which can be studied from orbit to give researchers a better idea of what may make up Earth’s core.
Technicians connect NASA’s Psyche spacecraft to the payload attach fitting inside the clean room at Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville, Florida on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Now that fueling and testing are complete, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is ready to meet its ride – a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Launch is now targeting 10:34 a.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 5 from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida after optimizing the trajectory for the mission to study a metal-rich asteroid.

Technicians connected Psyche to the payload attach fitting at Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville, Florida. This hardware allows Psyche to connect to the top of the rocket once it’s secure inside the protective payload fairings.

Psyche’s journey through space will last nearly six years and about 2.2 billion miles (3.6 billion kilometers) before reaching an asteroid of the same name, which is orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists believe Psyche could be part of the core of a planetesimal, likely made of iron-nickel metal. The ore will not be mined but studied from orbit in hopes of giving researchers a better idea of what may make up Earth’s core.

Additionally, the Psyche spacecraft will host a pioneering technology demonstration: NASA’s DSOC (Deep Space Optical Communications) experiment. This laser communications system will test high-bandwidth optical communications to Earth for the first two years of Psyche’s journey.