Artist's rendering of NASA's Pyche Space Probe above the 16 Psyche asteroid.
(Image Sources: NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Wikipedia.org, By NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State Univ./Space Systems Loral/Peter Rubin - Catalog page · Full-res (JPEG · TIFF), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59257398)
By Glenn A. Walsh
Reporting for SpaceWatchtower
Next week, NASA will launch a space probe, called Psyche, to a metal-rich Minor Planet in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, also called Psyche (officially titled 16 Psyche). The Psyche probe includes a laser communications experiment, which expects to increase communications performance between Earth and spacecraft by up to 100 times better than traditional radio communications.
The NASA Psyche mission is scheduled for launch, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, on Columbus Day (actual), Thursday Morning, 2023 October 12 at 10:16 a.m. Eastern Daylight Saving Time (EDT) / 14:16 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). A Live-stream Web-cast of the launch can be seen on the NASA Internet web-site: Internet link near the end of this blog-post.
As NASA extends space exploration to the Asteroid Belt, the launch of Psyche occurs on the anniversary of a historic exploration. Of course, Columbus Day commemorates the day in 1492 when famous Italian explorer Christopher Columbus landed in the “New World”. While he believed he had landed near the “Indies” (what Europeans called the areas we now know as China, Japan, and India), he actually went ashore on the island of Guanahani in the Bahamas.
Unlike NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to Asteroid 101955 Bennu, which returned asteroid soil samples to Earth just last month, Psyche will be the first mission to study a metallic asteroid. This probe will explore the origin of planetary cores.
Most asteroids are composed of rock and soil, mostly debris left over from the formation of other planets. However, 16 Psyche is primarily composed of iron and nickel (determined by radar studies). Asteroid Psyche is the heaviest known M-type Asteroid (about 140 statute miles / 225.3 kilometers in diameter). At one time, it was thought to be the exposed core of a proto-planet, but further studies have dismissed this possibility.
It does seem that this asteroid may have once been larger, possibly one of the largest asteroids, but not as large as a planet. For some reason, perhaps the result of a collision with one or more other asteroids, the outer portions of this planetoid were lost to Outer Space, with the iron and nickel core remaining. Scientists believe this asteroid could show what the core of the larger rocky planets, including Earth, may look like.
The billion-dollar, NASA Psyche mission has three main science goals ---
Understand a previously unexplored building block of planet formation: iron cores;
Look at the interior of a differentiated body, to see what may be similar to the interior of other rocky planets including the Earth;
Explore a new type of world, made of metal.
This mission will also test a new laser communications system, called Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC). This will the first test of such an optical communications system beyond the Earth – Moon system.
The 25-kilogram communications hardware is composed of three elements: flight laser transceiver (near-infrared laser transmitter and a sensitive photon-counting camera) aboard Psyche, ground laser transmitter, and ground laser receiver. The transceiver uses a 8.6-inch / 22-centimeter aperture telescope, which utilizes a mounting which stabilizes the telescope from spacecraft vibrations. The high-rate data down-link from the DSOC flight transceiver will be received by Palomar Observatory's famous 200-inch / 5.1-meter Hale Telescope in San Diego County, California, operated by the California Institute of Technology.
The DSOC demonstration, which will use just 75 watts of power, will begin about 60 days after the Psyche launch, as the spacecraft approaches a gravity-assist fly-by of Mars (necessitated by a one-year launch delay); 16 Psyche is three times farther from the Sun than the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The DSOC experiment is planned for a one year operation, with possible extensions of the experiment.
The DSOC test runs will occur, during the out-bound run of the spacecraft, over distances of 0.1 to 2.5 Astronomical Units. A unit of length, one Astronomical Unit is equivalent to the average distance between the center of the Sun and the center of the Earth: about 93 million statute miles / 149.6 kilometers / 8.3 light-minutes.
The Pysche mission is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The mission was proposed by Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Planetary Science Professor at Arizona State University, who is the mission Principal Investigator.
The Psyche mission was originally planned for launch in September of 2022; NASA delayed the mission due to software problems. Assuming the spacecraft is launched this month (launch window is 2023 October 5 to 25), it is expected to enter orbit around 16 Pysche in August of 2029. The spacecraft orbit is expected to last 21 months.
NASA 16 Psyche Launch Live-stream Web-cast:
Link >>> https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv/
Internet Links to Additional Information ---
NASA Psyche Space Probe -
Link 1 (NASA): >>> https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/psyche
Link 2 (AZ State Univ.): >>> https://psyche.asu.edu/
Link 3 (Wikipedia): >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyche_(spacecraft)
Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC):
Link >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Optical_Communications
Related Blog-Post ---
"NASA Laser Com-Link Doubles Satellite Data Speed." Mon. 2023 June 5.
Source: Glenn A. Walsh Reporting for SpaceWatchtower, a project of Friends of the Zeiss
Saturday, 2023 October 7.
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Glenn A. Walsh, Informal Science Educator & Communicator (For more than 50 years! - Since Monday Morning, 1972 June 12):
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Electronic Mail: < gawalsh@planetarium.cc >
Project Director, Friends of the Zeiss: Link >>> http://buhlplanetarium.tripod.com/fotz/
SpaceWatchtower Editor / Author: Link >>> http://spacewatchtower.blogspot.com/
Formerly Astronomical Observatory Coordinator & Planetarium Lecturer, original Buhl Planetarium & Institute of Popular Science (a.k.a. Buhl Science Center), America's fifth major planetarium and Pittsburgh's science & technology museum from 1939 to 1991.
Formerly Trustee, Andrew Carnegie Free Library and Music Hall, Pittsburgh suburb of Carnegie, Pennsylvania, the fourth of only five libraries where both construction and endowment funded by famous industrialist & philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.
Author of History Web Sites on the Internet --
* Buhl Planetarium, Pittsburgh: Link >>> http://www.planetarium.cc Buhl Observatory: Link >>> http://spacewatchtower.blogspot.com/2016/11/75th-anniversary-americas-5th-public.html
* Adler Planetarium, Chicago: Link >>> http://adlerplanetarium.tripod.com
* Astronomer, Educator, Optician John A. Brashear: Link >>> http://johnbrashear.tripod.com
* Andrew Carnegie & Carnegie Libraries: Link >>> http://www.andrewcarnegie.cc
* Other Walsh-Authored Blog & Web-Sites: Link >>> https://buhlplanetarium.tripod.com/gawweb.html
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