NASA’s Psyche mission fires up its futuristic electric engines

May 22 2024 by The Verge

 
Image: NASA

NASA has turned on the electric Hall thrusters of Psyche, a spacecraft that’s now gently motoring toward a metal-rich asteroid embedded in the main asteroid belt beyond Mars. The agency says Psyche is in “full cruise” mode now, six months after launching on October 13th, 2023, on a conventional, explodey SpaceX rocket.

On the way, NASA used Psyche to test laser-based deep space communications. The craft shot a communications laser back at the Earth from close to 10...

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