Most asteroids are made of a mix of rock and ice, but not 16 Psyche. Psyche is different, it's made mostly of solid metal. Scientists think Psyche is made mostly of iron and nickel. This has led scientists to wonder: is 16 Psyche the metallic core of a planet that existed in the days of the early solar system.
Psyche Asteroid Artistic Rendering
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
Psyche
Mission to a metal world
NASA is planning a Discovery-class mission to explore 16 Psyche, It is called Psyche. It is currently scheduled to launch in August of 2022 onboard a Falcon Heavy. After a Mars flyby, the Psyche spacecraft will arrive at 16 Psyche in 2026.
Upon it's arrival, the spacecraft will study the origins of 16 Psyche, and could teach us a lot about the early solar system.
Psyche was selected by NASA to be the 14th Discovery mission in 2017. The spacecraft bus was built by Maxar and arrived at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in March 2020.
Science instruments
There are 4 science experiments on the Psyche spacecraft. There is a Multispectral Imager, which will take images of Psyche. The composition of 16 Psyche will be determined by a Gamma Ray and Neutron Spectrometer. MIT and the Technical University of Denmark will provide a magnetometer to map Psyche's magnetic field. Psyche's communications antenna will also be used to study 16 Psyche's magnetic field.
In addition, Psyche will carry a technology demonstrator that will attempt to use lasers to communicate with Earth. Using lasers, ​instead of radio waves, to communicate will allow for more data to be sent to Earth in a shorter period of time.
An ion thruster undergoing testing. Credit: NASA
The Spacecraft
The Psyche spacecraft is based on Maxar's 1300-class spacecraft bus, and was delivered to Jet Propulsion Laboratory in March 2021. As mentioned above, the Psyche spacecraft will be propelled by ion thrusters. Put simply, ion thrusters are a different kind of thruster, they take a fuel, usually xenon, and ionize its molecules. The ionized molecules are then propelled out the back of the spacecraft. These ionized molecules provide a tiny amount of thrust. Over years, the tiny thrust provided by ion thrusters can maneuver a spacecraft. What ion thrusters lack in strength, they make up with in efficiency. Ion thrusters use much less fuel than conventional rocket engines, which allows for less fuel to be carried, and more science instruments to be added.
Ion thrusters require a lot of electricity, which is why the Psyche spacecraft has 10 large solar panels. Combined, they will produce 4.5 kilowatts of electricity.
Janus
Launching with Psyche will be two small CubeSats, Janus A, and Janus B. They will
fly separately and each visit a binary asteroid. Binary asteroids have two asteroids that are both orbiting each other. Binary asteroids are quite common in the asteroid belt, but none have ever been visited by spacecraft. The two Janus spacecraft are some of the first deep-space missions conducted by small satellites. These types of small-satellite missions began in 2018 with the MarCo CubeSats that launched with the InSight Mars mission.
Photo Credit: European Southern Observatory