Spacecraft · tracked live
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
- From the Sun
- 258,015,681 km (+609,063 km/d)
- From the Earth
- 274,217,027 km (-802,993 km/d)
- A signal takes
- 15 min
- Travelling at
- 24.6 km/s
Distances and speed are computed from JPL Horizons trajectories and are true of the date below, changing at the rate beside each.
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.