This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Psyche spacecraft headed to the metal-rich asteroid Psyche in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft launched in October 2023 and will arrive at its destination in 2029. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU’s Psyche spacecraft is on course to explore an asteroid by 2029, using innovative solar-powered electric thrusters for deep space travel.
An electric Hall thruster, identical to those that will be used to propel NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, undergoes testing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The blue glow is produced by the xenon propellant, a neutral gas used in car headlights and plasma TVs. Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechThe orbiter is now more than 190 million miles away and moving at a clip of 23 miles per second , relative to Earth. That’s about 84,000 mph .
“Until this point, we have been powering on and checking out the various pieces of equipment needed to complete the mission, and we can report they are working beautifully,” said Henry Stone, Psyche project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission. “Now we are on our way and looking forward to an upcoming close flyby of Mars.”
In the meantime, the Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration aboard the spacecraft will keep on testing its mettle. The experiment already surpassed expectations when, in April, itfrom over 140 million miles away at a rate of 267 megabits per second to a downlink station on Earth — a bit rate comparable to broadband internet download speeds.
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