On Dec. 4, the cameras of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft took their first images 26 million kilometers away from Earth. This milestone, called “dawn,” was one in all many the agency needed to finish on its option to its destination, a metallic asteroid called 16 Psyche. The spacecraft is ready to achieve this asteroid within the most important asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter in 2029.
Psyche was launched on Oct. 13 atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A on the Kenedy Space Center in Florida. Just a few hours after launch, the spacecraft entered an initial checkout phase that is ready to last about 100 days, during which teams will test the spacecraft’s instruments and systems to confirm they’re working as planned. Testing the spacecraft’s cameras was the most recent step on this phase to be accomplished.
Psyche’s “dawn”
The primary image from Psyche shows stars within the constellation Pisces, which the spacecraft’s Multispectral Imager instrument happened to be pointing at when it was first turned on. Each of the instrument’s two similar cameras took one image, each of which were stitched together to create one picture.
![](https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Psyche_Imager_Mosaic_231204-scaled.jpg)
Mosaic of Psyche’s dawn images, showing a star field within the constellation Pisces. The image shows raw, uncalibrated data. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)
“These initial images are only a curtain-opener,” said Psyche imager instrument lead Jim Bell of Arizona State University. “For the team that designed and operates this sophisticated instrument, dawn is a thrill. We start testing the cameras with star images like these, then in 2026 we’ll take test images of Mars throughout the spacecraft’s flyby. And at last, in 2029, we’ll get our most fun images yet – of our goal asteroid Psyche. We sit up for sharing all of those visuals with the general public.”
The team captured 68 images to check and calibrate the instrument and its filters. These filters allow scientists to look at 16 Psyche in several wavelengths of sunshine and analyze the composition of the asteroid’s surface. Moreover, they are going to use the cameras to check Psyche’s geology and history by making a 3D map of the asteroid.
Psyche’s Multispectral Imager instrument provides scientific images and serves as a mission-critical optical navigation instrument. The spacecraft is fitted with a pair of cameras to supply redundancy for these essential tasks.
The total image may be found here.
An annotated version of the identical image with stars labeled may be found here.
Laser communication experiment
Earlier, on Nov. 14, the teams reached one other notable milestone once they tested the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment. This experiment is designed to show optical communications using near-infrared laser beams in deep space. Although this technology has been utilized in space before, this was the primary test using optical communications beyond the Moon.
To check this experiment, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) used a laser beacon to send a signal to Psyche, which the spacecraft then locked onto and used to aim its laser at a receiving telescope on Earth. The massive distance between the spacecraft and the earth – 16 million kilometers on the time of the test – meant the spacecraft needed to be able to aiming its laser extremely precisely. As an extra challenge, the teams needed to compensate for the space Psyche had traveled throughout the time it took the signal to traverse space.
If DSOC can show reliable optical communications, future space missions can use this technology to send and receive so much more data per unit of time in comparison with radio communications. NASA hopes the DSOC can increase transmission rates by 10 to 100 times what they’re currently.
“Optical communication is a boon for scientists and researchers who all the time want more from their space missions, and can enable human exploration of deep space,” said Dr. Jason Mitchell, director of the Advanced Communications and Navigation Technologies Division inside NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation program. “More data means more discoveries.”
Although Psyche didn’t use the DSOC experiment to transmit mission data, the DSOC and Psyche teams needed to work closely together to be certain that the test didn’t interfere with the spacecraft’s operations. “It was a formidable challenge, and we have now so much more work to do, but for a short while, we were capable of transmit, receive, and decode some data,” said Meera Srinivasan, operations lead for DSOC at JPL.
Other tests and instruments
The DSOC experiment was not the one distance record achieved by the spacecraft. When teams fired up two of the 4 electric Hall-effect thrusters on Nov. 8, it was the primary time this sort of propulsion was used beyond lunar orbit.
Besides the Multispectral Imager instrument and the DSOC experiment, Psyche carries three more science instruments. The spacecraft’s magnetometer will measure the asteroid’s magnetic field, the Gamma-Ray and Neutron Spectrometer (GRNS) will allow scientists to find out the fundamental composition of the asteroid, and eventually, the X-band radio communications system will even be tasked with measuring the asteroid’s gravity field.
Shortly after Psyche’s magnetometer was powered on in late October, it detected a magnetic signal brought on by a solar eruption. This not only indicated that the instrument worked and was capable of detect small magnetic fields but in addition confirmed that the spacecraft itself didn’t generate magnetic fields that interfered with the observations. The latter couldn’t be verified on Earth due to the planet’s magnetic field.
Between Nov. 6 and Nov. 27, the gamma-ray spectrometer of the GRNS was turned on to gather data for the primary time since launch. “[The data] are showing us that we have now a extremely high-performance instrument, and can allow us to refine calculations about how sensitive we’ll be after we get to Psyche,” said Psyche Gamma-Ray Spectrometer investigation lead David Lawrence of The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
Next, the teams are planning to check the neutron spectrometer of the GRNS throughout the week of Dec. 11.