Mission to Psyche_ One Year Into the Spacecraft’s Journey to a Metal-Rich Asteroid

One year after a successful launch on Oct. 13, 2023, team members on the Psyche mission to the metal-rich asteroid of the same name reflect on launch day, discuss mission operations and accomplishments since launch, and look forward to upcoming milestones, including a flyby of Mars in May 2026.

Whether the Psyche asteroid is the partial core of a planetesimal (a building block of the rocky planets in our solar system) or primordial material that never melted, scientists expect the mission to help answer fundamental questions about Earth’s own metal core and the formation of our solar system.

The spacecraft will begin orbiting the asteroid Psyche in 2029.

Riding along with the spacecraft is the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) technology demonstration, which has been transmitting data at the highest rate ever achieved from deep space beyond the Moon.