2023-10-13 16:40:04
The Psyche spaceship of NASA was launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket this Friday, after yesterday’s postponement due to meteorological reasons. Now will travel 3,540 million kilometers from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida up to metal-rich asteroidon the edge of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Feel the noize! Ain’t nothin’ but a good time. All aboard the #MissionToPsyche! Next stop: A metal world. pic.twitter.com/fUDbHrXHDC
— NASA (@NASA) October 13, 2023
Once it reaches the asteroid in 2029, the spacecraft will study it for more than two years
Leaving behind a blue glow coming from its thrusters and powered by a pair of huge solar panelsthe orbiter will use its payload of scientific instruments to learn more about the asteroide Psyche.
Once you arrive, in 2029will orbit this metal-rich asteroid for 26 months while carrying out his scientific research
Six mission facts
These are six aspects that you need to know about the mission, according to those responsible:
1. Learning more about the asteroid Psyche could give us more information about the origins of our solar system.
Based on data obtained with radars and ground-based optical telescopes, scientists hypothesize that the asteroid Psyche could be part of the metal-rich interior of a planetesimal, a building block of a rocky planet that never formed. Psyche may have collided with other large celestial bodies during its initial formation and lost its rocky outer crust.
Asteroid Psyche could be part of the metal-rich interior of a planetesimal, a building block of a rocky planet that never formed
Humans can’t break through to Earth’s metallic core, so visiting Psyche could offer a unique window into the history of the violent collisions and accumulation of matter that created planets like ours.
2. The asteroid could also suggest a different story for how solar system objects formed.
While the rocks of Mars, Venus and Earth are full of iron oxides, the surface of Psyche does not appear to contain many of these chemical compounds. This suggests that Psyche’s story differs from the usual stories of planet formation.
If it is proven that the asteroid is leftover material from the basic components of the core in the formation of a planet, scientists will learn how its history is similar and different from that of rocky planets. And if scientists discover that Psyche is not an exposed core it could turn out to be a type of original solar system object never seen before.
3. Three scientific instruments and an investigation into gravity will help clarify these stories about the origin of the solar system and more.
He magnetometer The spacecraft will search for evidence of an ancient magnetic field on the asteroid Psyche. A residual magnetic field would be strong evidence that the asteroid formed from the core of a planetary body.
Detecting a residual magnetic field would show that the asteroid was formed from the core of a planetary body
He spectrometer of neutrons and gamma rays from the orbiter will help scientists determine the chemical elements that make up the asteroid and better understand how it formed.
He multispectral imager of the spacecraft will provide information about Psyche’s mineral composition as well as its topography.
The mission’s scientific team will take advantage of the telecommunications system to carry out gravity research. By analyzing the radio waves with which the spacecraft communicates, scientists can measure how the asteroid Psyche affects the spacecraft’s orbit.
That information will help them determine the rotation, mass and gravity field of the asteroid, offering additional information about the composition and structure of the asteroid’s interior.
4. The spacecraft will use a highly efficient propulsion system beyond the Moon for the first time.
Driven by the calls Hall thrustershe solar electric propulsion system de Psyche harnesses the energy generated by large solar panels to create electric and magnetic fields. These, in turn, accelerate and eject charged atoms, or ions, from a fuel called xenon (a neutral gas used in car headlights and plasma televisions) at such a high speed that it creates propulsion, or thrust.
The ionized gas will emit a blue glow, as in science fiction stories, while leaving a trail behind Psyche in space. Each of the spacecraft’s four thrusters, which will operate one at a time, exert the same amount of force that would be felt by holding three quarters in the palm of your hand. In the frictionless vacuum of space, this will cause the spacecraft to accelerate slowly and continuously.
The ionized gas will emit a blue glow, just like in science fiction stories, while leaving a trail behind Psyche in space
This propulsion system is based on similar technologies used by NASA’s Dawn mission, but Psyche will be the agency’s first mission to use Hall effect thrusters in deep space.
5. Psyche is a collaboration.
The mission draws on resources and expertise from NASA, universities and industry. The main researcher, Lindy Elkins-Tanton, works at Arizona State University (ASU). By enabling collaboration with students across the country, this partnership provides opportunities to train future leaders in science and engineering instruments and missions, and to inspire student projects related to art, entrepreneurship, and innovation. More than a dozen other universities and research institutions are represented on the mission team.
For its part, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California manages this mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, is also responsible for systems engineering, integration and testing, and mission operations.
NASA’s Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center manages launch operations and contracted the services of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. The Maxar Technologies team in Palo Alto, California, provided the solar electric propulsion chassis—the main body of the spacecraft—and most of its engineering hardware systems.
Additionally, a technology demonstration called Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOCalso managed by JPL, travels aboard Psyche in order to test high-speed laser data communications that could be used by future NASA missions.
6. Participation of citizens in the mission
To enhance public participation in this space exploration, the website Get involved (“participate” in English) proposes activities, including an annual internship for university students to interpret the mission through artistic and other creative work, as well as classroom lessons, craft projects and videos.
Mission Websites nasa.gov/psyche y psyche.asu.edu They will also publish official news about the spacecraft’s journey, as will NASA and ASU, which will post regular updates on their social networks.
On a website you can see where in the solar system Psyche is at any given moment.
For your part, Eyes on the Solar System NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System, a free web-based 3D visualization tool, will track the spacecraft’s location in real time. In another website You can see where Psyche is in the solar system at any given moment.
About two months after launch, as the team performs an initial check of the spacecraft and scientific instruments, it expects to receive its first images. Once they arrive, they will be published to publicize what Psyche observes.
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