NASA's psychological mission suffered a strange malfunction on its way to metal asteroids

The Psyche spacecraft, launched about two years ago, is currently gathering with unique asteroids to learn about the origins of Earth. Although it is still far from the orbit of an asteroid in the same name orbit, psychological tasks have encountered problems with their propulsion system that forces it to push the thruster.

NASA engineers on the NASA mission mission are investigating the root cause of the recent reduction in fuel pressure in spacecraft propulsion systems, a problem that needs to be addressed by mid-June to avoid affecting the mission’s trajectory. “The mission team chose to delay thrust while the engineers worked hard to understand the pressure drop,” NASA wrote in the update.

Launched in October 2023, Psyche embarked on a 2.2 billion mile journey to the metal-rich asteroids located in the main belt. The spacecraft began launching thrusters using a solar propulsion system in May 2024, which relies on solar energy to generate power for four electric thrusters. According to NASA, the spacecraft discovered a drop in pressure on the line that transports xenon gas to the thruster on April 1, and the product changed from 36 pounds per square inch (PSI) to about 26 psi. To abruptly reduce, the spacecraft automatically supplies power from the thruster.

This task can enable the thruster to shut down for another month and a half before it is too late, when the detector needs to adjust its trajectory. As it struggles to figure out what could cause the fuel pressure to drop, the NASA team of engineers is also considering switching to the spacecraft’s backup fuel line so that the launch thruster can be restored.

If all goes well, the spacecraft will enter the psychological orbit of the asteroid in late July 2029 and begin the mission in August of the same year. The mission is scheduled to pop up using Earth's gravity pull in spring 2026, pushing it toward a slingshot of the major asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Psyche is a 140-mile-wide (226 km) asteroid that may be the shedding core of a broken planet, one of the components that form the planet.

This task has been in production for a long time and has encountered quite a few problems. Psyche was originally scheduled to be launched in 2022, but an issue with the spacecraft's flight software delayed the mission to the next release window of the second year. The spacecraft's flight software controls its direction and trajectory, as well as the ability to send and receive data to the Earth. A week before the initial release date of October 5, 2023, engineers discovered a problem with the thruster of the Psyche spacecraft that could have caused it to overheat during its eight-year mission. As a result, the task promotion date was postponed by a week as the team solved the problem.

NASA officials don't seem to care about this issue. “This happened, and that's why we put redundancy into our mission,” Louise Prockter, director of NASA's Planetary Sciences, said at a meeting on Wednesday. “We have no concerns about this at the moment, but we obviously have some attention.”