NASA's Psyche mission: the long road to a metal world
Hall-effect thrusters, a laser-beamed cat video, a 2026 Mars flyby and a 2029 arrival — how the Psyche spacecraft is getting there.
Published 2026-10-23
NASA's Psyche spacecraft lifted off on October 13, 2023, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center.[2] It is the first mission to explore an asteroid whose surface contains substantial amounts of metal rather than rock or ice.[2]
Powered by gentle thrust
Instead of big chemical burns, Psyche uses solar electric propulsion: four SPT-140 Hall-effect thrusters that use electricity from its solar arrays to accelerate xenon. It is the first interplanetary spacecraft to use Hall-effect thrusters.[6] With its arrays deployed, the spacecraft is big enough to almost cover a tennis court.[2]
The cruise has not been entirely smooth: in April 2025 the team saw an unexpected pressure drop in the xenon propulsion system and worked around it.[6]
A cat video from deep space
Psyche carries Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC), NASA's first demonstration of laser communications beyond the Earth–Moon system.[6] On December 11, 2023, the experiment streamed a short video of a team member's cat chasing a laser pointer from about 31 million km away, at the system's maximum rate of 267 megabits per second.[6]
The Mars slingshot
On May 15, 2026, Psyche flew past Mars at about 4,600 km from the surface. The gravity assist adjusted the tilt of its orbit around the Sun to line it up with the asteroid's orbital plane.[6]
Arrival in 2029
Psyche's prime mission begins in August 2029.[2] The plan calls for a series of progressively different orbits — starting with “Orbit A” about 700 km up for magnetic-field measurements and preliminary mapping — and about 817 days in orbit in total.[6] The instruments include a multispectral imager, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, a magnetometer and a radio gravity experiment.[1]
The mission is led by Arizona State University, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory managing it.[4] Its biggest question: is Psyche really part of the core of an early planetary building block?[1]
Numbered citations link to the sources list on the 16 Psyche overview page.