NASA · orbiter active
Psyche
NASA's Psyche is flying to a metal-rich asteroid that may be the exposed core of an early planetary building block.
- Launch
- 13 October 2023
- Distance from Earth today
- 256.8 million km1.717 AU · light: 14 min 17 s
- Distance from the Sun today
- 270.1 million km1.805 AU
Live distance from Earth and chart →
Trajectory
Trajectory: JPL Horizons vectors (spacecraft -255) every 2 days, projected onto the ecliptic; compressed distance scale.
About the mission
Asteroid 16 Psyche, about 280 km long, appears to contain a lot of metal, unlike the rocky or icy bodies visited so far. The spacecraft is pushed by solar-electric Hall thrusters that emit a faint blue glow of ionised xenon, and it flew past Mars in May 2026 to bend its course toward the main belt. It should be captured by the asteroid in mid-2029 and spend about two years in progressively lower orbits, mapping its surface, gravity and magnetism. On the way it also tested deep-space laser communication.