SpaceX Falcon Heavy Prepared for NASA's Psyche Mission Launch | NASA Kennedy

SpaceX Falcon Heavy Prepared for NASA's Psyche Mission Launch | NASA Kennedy

Photos of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket that will launch NASA's Psyche mission in the hangar at Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida before it rolled out to the pad for a static fire test as part of preparations for the journey to a metal-rich asteroid. Psyche’s launch period opens Oct. 5, 2023. The spacecraft is scheduled to begin orbiting the asteroid Psyche in 2029.

Whether the asteroid Psyche is the partial core of a planetesimal (one of the building blocks of the rocky planets in our solar system) or primordial material that never melted, scientists expect the mission to help answer fundamental questions about Earth’s own metal core and the formation of our solar system. 

Arizona State University leads the Psyche mission. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, is responsible for the mission’s overall management, system engineering, integration and test, and mission operations. Maxar is providing the high-power solar electric propulsion spacecraft chassis. Psyche was selected in 2017 as the 14th mission under NASA’s Discovery Program.

Learn all about NASA's first-of-its-kind Mission to Psyche:

For more information, go to: www.nasa.gov/psyche and psyche.asu.edu

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/psyche

Credit: Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX)

Release Date: Sept. 27, 2023

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