On Thursday at 10:16 a.m. EDT , NASA's Psyche spacecraft will blast off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
At roughly 173 miles across at its widest point, the potato-shaped 16 Psyche is one of the largest known asteroids in the solar system. The spacecraftPsyche is a roughly van-sized spacecraft consisting of solar arrays, a magnetometer, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, and a multispectral imager to study the asteroid. It will propel itself through space by solar electrical propulsion, which uses converted sunlight to accelerate charged xenon atoms and blast them from one of its four thrusters.
The long journey aheadTo arrive at the asteroid, the Psyche spacecraft will travel to Mars, using the gentle propulsion provided by the craft's ion thrusters, before slingshotting around the Red Planet. This gravity assist should enable the spacecraft to reach the asteroid by August 2029.