The NASA moon rocket for the Artemis mission stands on Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. A hydrogen leak was detected on the rocket during a tanking test this morning. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
NASA and the American company SpaceX launched the Falcon heavy rocket carrying the Psyche probe heading towards the Psyche asteroid, from the Kennedy Space Airport in Florida at 10:19 on October 13 (17:19 Moscow time).
The probe is expected to reach the Psyche asteroid in July 2029, where it will study this celestial body, whose diameter is estimated at 280 km, for two years. For this purpose, the probe, which resembles a small truck, was equipped with a magnetic wave meter and a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer, as specialists consider that the asteroid consists entirely of metals.
It is noteworthy that the asteroid Psyche was discovered on March 17, 1852 by the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis, who named it Psyche after the symbol of the soul in Greek mythology. The asteroid’s orbit is 2.6 solar units (the distance between the Sun and Earth) from the Sun.
