Psyche

Mission Profile

Psyche is a NASA Discovery-class mission launched on 13 October 2023 aboard a Falcon Heavy to study the metallic asteroid 16 Psyche, which may be the exposed iron-nickel core of a differentiated planetesimal — essentially the core of a planet that never fully formed. The spacecraft will enter orbit around Psyche in 2029 and spend 26 months mapping its topography, composition, gravity field, and magnetic field using multispectral imaging, gamma-ray and neutron spectroscopy, and magnetometry. If Psyche is indeed a planetary core remnant, the mission would provide humanity's first direct view of the type of material thought to exist at the centers of rocky planets like Earth. Psyche also carried NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration, testing laser-based high-bandwidth data transmission from deep space.