psyche
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How Scientists Are Preparing for Apophis’s Unnervingly Close Brush With Earth
In about five years’ time, a potentially hazardous asteroid will swing by Earth at an eerily close distance of less than 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers). During this rare encounter, Apophis will be ten times closer to Earth than the Moon and scientists want to take full advantage of its visit. Apophis is a on trajectory…
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NASA Needs Ideas to Study Potentially Hazardous Asteroid Apophis
Asteroid 99942 Apophis is fast approaching our home planet for an uncomfortably close encounter in 2029. In order to prepare for the rare event, NASA is calling for ideas for low cost missions to rendezvous with Apophis, but the space agency already has a pair of asteroid probes ready to take on the task. NASA…
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NASA Probe Transmits Groundbreaking Laser Message From 10 Million Miles Away
A gold-capped laser transceiver attached to the asteroid probe Psyche saw its first light on Tuesday, sending and receiving data through laser beams from far beyond the Moon for the first time. NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment beamed data encoded within a near-infrared laser from nearly 10 million miles in deep space (16…
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NASA Fixes Psyche Spacecraft’s Thruster Issue Just in Time for Launch
NASA’s mission to a metal-rich asteroid is back on track after a minor setback. Psyche is now all set to launch on October 12. A week before the original scheduled launch, engineers discovered an issue with the Psyche spacecraft’s thrusters that could have caused it to overheat during its eight-year mission. As a result, NASA…