NASA's Psyche spacecraft hits a speed bump on the way to a metal asteroid

31 lisa_k 2 5/1/2025, 1:08:06 PM arstechnica.com ↗

Comments (2)

jayemar · 6h ago
Interesting read. The main paragraph regarding mission success is probably this:

> So far, there's no effect on the Psyche spacecraft's trajectory. Psyche's plasma thrusters can remain unpowered until at least mid-June before the spacecraft would begin to drift off course, according to NASA. Mission managers decided to keep Psyche's engines turned off until they better understand the pressure decrease. If engineers trace the problem to the fuel line itself, NASA has the option of switching to a backup fuel line to resume thrusting.

accrual · 3h ago
Good luck, Psyche team! It's always kind of exciting to see an issue appear only to learn there was already a redundancy in place to handle it.