NASA investigates drop in Psyche spacecraft's fuel pressure

1/5/2025 5:50

Engineers with NASA's Psyche mission are investigating a recent drop in fuel pressure in the spacecraft's propulsion system, NASA said on Wednesday.

The Psyche spacecraft relies on solar electric propulsion, a system that uses energy to generate power for four electric thrusters. The thrusters then propel the spacecraft by expelling charged atoms, or ions, of the neutral gas xenon.

Psyche began firing its thrusters in May 2024. On April 1 of this year, the spacecraft detected a decrease in pressure in the line supplying xenon gas to the thrusters. In response, and as programmed, the thrusters automatically shut down.

Mission managers have since paused all thrusting operations while engineers work to diagnose the cause of the pressure drop. According to NASA, the current mission timeline allows for a pause in thrusting until at least mid-June without affecting the spacecraft's trajectory.

The Psyche mission was launched on Oct. 13, 2023. It is currently about 238 million kilometers from Earth and is scheduled to begin orbiting the metal-rich asteroid Psyche in 2029.