NASA is preparing to launch another asteroid mission tomorrow. The mission comes after the OSIRIS-REx mission brought asteroid samples to Earth late last month, with NASA outlining yesterday that rock samples from asteroid Bennu contain high levels of carbon and water - two building blocks of life.
The Psyche mission, named after its destination asteroid Psyche, is scheduled to take off tomorrow from the space agency's Kennedy Space Center aboard SpaceX's largest operational rocket, Falcon Heavy.
While NASA has launched multiple payloads and missions to distant celestial bodies, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket has mostly been limited to launching satellites into Earth orbit. The rocket's only interplanetary mission so far was a test flight that sent a Tesla Roadster to Mars, after which the rocket didn't fly for a year before launching twice in 2019. Then there was another long break and flying resumed in 2019. Regular flights will begin at the end of 2022.
SpaceX shared on its X (formerly Twitter) page that the Falcon Heavy rocket will place the payload fairing into the interstellar transfer orbit. Launching missions to distant destinations, such as the asteroid Psyche, which is 229 million kilometers from Earth at its closest point in its orbit, requires placing the spacecraft in a higher orbit before the second stage can take over.
For the Psyche spacecraft, NASA plans to use a Mars gravity assist device to increase its speed and reduce travel time during its mission. If the mission lifts off tomorrow, the spacecraft will arrive at its destination in 2029, less than six years after launch. Once it reaches the asteroid, it is expected to orbit it for 26 months.
Once at its destination, the spacecraft will map the celestial body by orbiting it at different altitudes. As part of four different orbits, it will descend nearly 40 miles above the ground and fly to an altitude of 440 miles higher. The mission aims to map the asteroid's surface and determine its gravitational and magnetic characteristics.
NASA will also use the Psyche mission to test a new communications system designed to significantly increase data transmission speeds. It's part of NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) test, which will place a transceiver equipped with a laser transmitter and camera to send laser light to Earth and receive laser communications from its home star. Through the test, NASA will conduct laser communications with a spacecraft at least 240 million kilometers away from Earth for the first time within the first two years of the Psyche spacecraft's journey to a metallic asteroid.
The mission was originally scheduled to launch on October 5, but problems with the nitrogen thrusters delayed the launch. These thrusters are an important part of the mission profile as they are responsible for guiding it through space on its journey. The Pysche satellite is also equipped with an argon thruster, which the NASA team filled with a ton of xenon gas in mid-August as part of pre-launch preparations.
Weather permitting, the Psyche mission is scheduled to launch from the Kennedy Space Center at 10:19 a.m. local time on Friday.