AMSTERDAM — NASA has decided to switch to a backup propellant line on its Psyche asteroid mission to allow the spacecraft to resume use of its electric propulsion system.
The thrusters on the Psyche spacecraft, on its way to an asteroid also known as Psyche, shut down at the beginning of April after pressure fell in a line feeding xenon propellant to those thrusters. NASA said in late April that it was investigating the cause of the issue and potential solutions, with a goal of restarting the thrusters by mid-June.
In a May 28 statement, the agency said engineers concluded that a component in a valve in the propellant line “is no longer functioning as expected and is obstructing the flow of xenon to the thrusters.” That caused the decrease in pressure.
NASA adopted one of the solutions it previously discussed, switching to a backup propellant line. That line is now working and the agency said that Psyche will restart its thrusters by the middle of June. NASA added it will keep a valve like the one that malfunctioned open in the backup propellant line to prevent a similar problem from reoccurring.
Psyche uses the electric thrusters, along with a Mars gravity assist in May 2026, to arrive at the asteroid Psyche in August 2029. It will go into orbit around Psyche and use its instruments to study the large metallic asteroid, which may be the fragment of the core of a planetesimal that failed to become a planet.
The propellant valve problem was the first major issue NASA reported with Psyche since its October 2023 launch on a Falcon Heavy. The $1.2 billion Discovery-class mission had run into significant problems during its development, though, delaying the launch by more than a year and increasing its cost by 20%.
