Meteorological officials with the 45th Weather Squadron at Cape Canaveral Space Station are predicting only a 20 percent chance of favorable weather conditions for Thursday's launch of NASA's Psyche mission, with anvil clouds, cumulonimbus clouds and surface electric field rules being the main weather concerns.
On Tuesday, October 10, 2023, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the United States, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket carrying the Psyche spacecraft was sent to the launch pad of the 39A launch site. October 10, 2023, Kennedy Space Center, Florida. NASA's Psyche spacecraft will travel to a metal-rich asteroid of the same name, which orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter, with the aim of studying its composition. The spacecraft also carries the agency's Deep Space Optical Communications Technology Demonstration, which will test laser communications beyond the moon. Image credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
SpaceX plans to launch NASA's Psyche spacecraft with a Falcon Heavy rocket at 10:16 a.m. EST on Thursday, October 12, from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Psyche has until October 25 to launch.
On Friday, October 6, 2023, the team transported NASA's packaged Psyche spacecraft from Astrotech's Space Operations Facility in Titusville to Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Psyche will be launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Liftoff is scheduled for Thursday, October 12, at 10:16 a.m. ET. Launching with Psyche will be a groundbreaking technology demonstration, NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment. Source: NASA/BenSmegelsky
Psyche is the first mission to explore an asteroid whose surface may contain significant amounts of metal rather than rock or ice. NASA's Launch Services program at Kennedy Space Center is responsible for the design and approval of the launch vehicle and manages launch services for the Psyche mission.