NASA’nın Psyche aracı metal asteroide giderken iticilerini neredeyse hiç durdurmuyor

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, which left Earth in October 2023, has completed a gravity assist at Mars and is now heading for a metal-rich asteroid that shares its name. Before the flyby, engineers fired its electric thrusters only now and then; since 28 September they have kept them running almost without pause, stopping once a week to contact the team on the ground. The system uses solar power to push xenon ions out through a Hall-effect mechanism, producing a force roughly equal to the weight of a single AA battery. Small as it is, this push accumulates over months, so the probe should eventually exceed 160,000 kilometres per hour relative to Earth. After roughly three months at full power, the thrusters will gradually be throttled back to about half as the solar arrays receive weaker sunlight. Psyche should arrive at its target, located in the main asteroid belt, by summer 2029.