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NASA Invites Media to Psyche Launch, Mission will Study an Asteroid

The first of two solar arrays for NASA’s Psyche spacecraft has been extended inside the Astrotech Space Operations Facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 20, 2023. Technicians are preparing to integrate the solar arrays to the Psyche spacecraft. The solar arrays were shipped from Maxar Technologies, in San Jose, California. They are part of the solar electric propulsion system, provided by Maxar, that will power the spacecraft on its journey to explore a metal-rich asteroid. Psyche will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy. Launch is targeted for Oct. 5, 2023. Riding with Psyche is a pioneering technology demonstration, NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment.

Media accreditation is now open for the upcoming launch of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, for a mission to a unique metal-rich asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.

NASA and SpaceX are targeting 10:38 a.m. EDT on Thursday, Oct. 5, for launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Media accreditation deadlines for the Psyche launch are as follows:

Media accreditation requests should be submitted online at:

https://media.ksc.nasa.gov

A copy of NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online. For questions about accreditation, please email: ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov. For other mission questions, please contact NASA Kennedy’s newsroom: 321-867-2468.

The asteroid Psyche may be part of a core of a planetesimal, a building block of an early planet. Deep within rocky, terrestrial planets – including Earth – scientists infer the presence of metallic cores, but these lie unreachably far below the planets’ rocky mantles and crusts. Psyche will offer a unique window into the process that created terrestrial planets.

NASA will post updates on launch preparations to prepare the spacecraft for its 2.5-billion-mile (4-billion-kilometer) journey on the Psyche blog. Riding with Psyche is a pioneering technology demonstration, called NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment, which will be NASA’s furthest-ever test of high-bandwidth optical communications.

Para obtener información sobre cobertura en español en el Centro Espacial Kennedy o si desea solicitar entrevistas en español, comuníquese con Antonia Jaramillo at: antonia.jaramillobotero@nasa.gov, 321-501-8425, o Messod Bendayan, 256-930-1371.

For more information about Psyche and DSOC, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/psyche

Source: NASA

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