Spacecraft
Psyche
On its way to (16) Psyche, an asteroid unusually rich in metal. One reading of it is the exposed core of a small world broken apart, which would be as near as anyone has come to the inside of a planet - but that is the hypothesis the mission is going to test, not a thing already known. It flies on solar-electric thrusters, and arrives in 2029.
- Agency
- NASA
- Launched
- 2023-10-13 - still working
Path
A cruise under an ion engine that thrusts almost continuously rather than in bursts, with a Mars flyby in 2026, to enter orbit round the asteroid Psyche in 2029.
Along the way
- Mars flyby, tilting the orbit into the asteroid's plane
Everything the map shows is worked out in your browser from published orbital data - nothing on it is a stored picture of where things were.