/sci/ - Science & Math

NASA just launched the Psyche mission—no one knows what it will find, NASA launches Psyche mission to metal world
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https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/nasa-is-about-to-launch-a-mission-of-pure-discovery-to-a-metal-asteroid/
> Psyche is going to a metal world with plasma engines and lasers. It's not sci-fi.
> CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—A roughly 3-ton spacecraft launched Friday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin a six-year trip to an enigma in the asteroid belt, an unusual metallic world the size of Massachusetts that could hold clues about the formation of Earth and other rocky planets.
> The Psyche mission was supposed to launch last year, but NASA grounded the spacecraft after it became clear it wasn't ready to fly. Managers blamed a blend of workforce issues and software testing woes for the delay.
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https://spacenews.com/nasa-launches-psyche-mission-to-metal-world/
WASHINGTON — A NASA spacecraft is finally on its way to a metallic main belt asteroid after a successful Falcon Heavy launch Oct. 13.
> “There would have been a potential risk of overheating the thrusters and damaging them” if the parameters were not changed, Henry Stone, Psyche project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said at an Oct. 11 briefing. “It was a serious issue that we had to deal with.”
> Psyche’s delay also affected Janus, an asteroid smallsat mission that was to fly as a secondary payload on the launch. The delay meant that Janus could not fly its original mission to go by two pairs of binary asteroids, and the mission could not find suitable alternative targets with its revised trajectory. NASA announced in July it was canceling Janus and putting the completed spacecraft in storage.

ok so there was supposed to be a secondary payload, but the delay fucked that