NASA’s psychological mission suffers from a strange defect on its way to a metal asteroid

The psychological spacecraft was launched for nearly two years and is currently on its way to stirring with a unique asteroid in an attempt to understand the origins of the earth. Although he is still a few years away from the asteroid, which has the same name, the mission of the soul has faced a problem with the payment system that forced it to stop its deterioration.

NASA engineers who have a psychological task are looking for the radical cause of a decrease in fuel pressure in the aliens, a problem that must be solved before mid -June so as not to affect the course of the task. NASA wrote in a file. to update.

Psyche It was launched in October 2023The start of a 2.2 billion miles trip to a metal asteroid located in the main belt. The spacecraft began to launch defenses in May 2024, using the solar energy -power system that depends on solar energy to generate energy for four electrical entry. On April 1, the spacecraft discovered a decrease in the line that provides xenon gas to the defenses, which moved from 36 pounds per square inch (PSI) to about 26 pounds, according to NASA. In response to the sudden decrease, the spacecraft automatically operated its cannons.

The task can keep its homes closed for a month and a half before it is too late – when the investigation needs to adjust its course. Since it is working to know what has caused a decrease in fuel pressure, the NASA team is also considering switching to the fuel line of the spacecraft so that it can resume the release of defenses.

If things go well, the spacecraft will enter a psychological asteroid in late July 2029 and its mission begins in August of the same year. The task is scheduled to be on a Mars journey in the spring of 2026, using the planet’s attractiveness from the planet to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Psyche is a 140 -mile asteroid (226 km), which may be an abstract essence of a broken planet, one of the building blocks that meet to form a planet.

The task was a long time to make it, and she faced her fair share of issues. It was already scheduled to launch Psyche in 2022, however A case with the aviation program in the spacecraft that delayed the mission Until the next launch window next year. The aviation program in the spacecraft controls its direction and its path, as well as its ability to send and receive data to the Earth. A week before the original launch date on October 5, 2023, Engineers discovered a problem with psychological spacecraft cannons This can cause a temperature to rise during its eight -year mission. As a result, the date of the mission was delayed by one week as the team solved the problem.

NASA officials do not seem very concerned about the problem. “This type of things happens and this is the reason that we are building repetition in our duties,” Louise Procter, director of NASA’s planetary science department, said during a meeting of Mars Explosive Analysis Software on Wednesday. I mentioned. “We have no concerns at the present time about it, but it is clear that we are keeping it.”