© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Elon Musk-led SpaceX is set to launch NASA’s mission to the asteroid Psyche on October 12. The mission will launch from the space agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the company’s Falcon Heavy rocket.
Psyche is both the name for the mission and the asteroid that it plans to visit. Led by Arizona State University, it was chosen by NASA in 2017 as one of the two missions for its Discovery Program. The program funds relatively low-cost missions to target within the solar system. The mission was initially supposed to launch on October 5, but NASA later announced that it now plans to launch the Psyche mission at 7.46 PM IST on October 12, delaying it by a week.
NASA said the postponement will allow it to complete the verification of parameters used to control the Psyche spacecraft’s nitrogen cold gas thrusters. The thrusters will be used by the vehicle to point itself in different directions or for other needs like momentum management and reorientation.
Psyche is only the 16th asteroid to ever have been discovered, according to Arizona State University. It was discovered by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis in 1852, who named it after the goddess of the soul in ancient Greek mythology.
The asteroid is believed to be rich in metal content, which is why it holds the interest of astronomers. There is a chance that it is made of metal from the core of a planetesimal, which is one of the building blocks of a planetary system.
The asteroid is more than 500 million kilometres away from us, meaning that it takes light around 31 minutes to travel the distance. NASA believes the Psyche mission will reach the asteroid in about six years. If the asteroid were a perfect sphere, it would have a diameter of about 226 kilometres, which is around the aerial distance between Delhi and Chandigarh.
Scientists estimate that the asteroid Psyche has a surface area of about 165,800 square kilometres. For context, the state of Tamil Nadu covers a land area of about 130,058 square kilometres.
The Psyche spacecraft will travel to the asteroid using low-thrust solar-electric propulsion. On its way, it will take advantage of a Mars fly-by and a gravity assist. After arriving at the asteroid, it will take science observations from four staging orbits around the asteroid. The spacecraft will get closer and closer to the asteroid with each orbit.
