Remember the Psyche Mission? It's Ba-ack

In the spring of '22 and into June, when the mission was cancelled, the "next big mission" was NASA's mission to an Asteroid called 16 Psyche.  Big in the sense of being a standout among other missions as well as being so big it requires a Falcon Heavy to lift it up on its way.  The launch was cancelled for the year due to a handful of problems between hardware and software on the satellite - more details at that link above.

The satellite itself arrived in Florida this week and preparations are continuing for a launch currently listed as NET October 5 at 10:38 AM.   That's less than two months from today and it could even, possibly, be fall by then (Florida insider joke).  Bearing in mind the one year delay since summer of '22, it's looking at a launch more than a year late, but mission managers said today the probe is essentially ready for launch.  

The delay was a major impact to the mission, though.  For one thing, a launch in '22 would have gotten the satellite to Psyche by 2026.  That one year delay moves the arrival date out three years - to "before the end of the decade."  Then there's the cost.  In 2022, the Psyche mission was estimated to cost $985 million. That's now increased to $1.23 billion.

If the name doesn't bring details back to mind immediately, it's an interesting mission.  16 Psyche is an asteroid believed to be entirely (or almost so) made of metal.  As the mission web page at Arizona State University teases,  “For the first time ever, we are exploring a world made not of rock or ice, but of metal.” From time to time, I come across speculation of someone finding an asteroid made of gold or platinum and how rich they could get.  Chances are Psyche isn't gold-pressed latinum (Star Trek joke), but might be the heavier metals found in planetary cores like iron, and nickel.  (Disclaimer: only my interpretation.)  

Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche's principal investigator at Arizona State University has this perspective:

Scientists aren't sure what awaits the Psyche spacecraft when it reaches its destination. Elkins-Tanton said modeling of the asteroid's appearance based on telescopic observations suggests it has an irregular potato-like shape.

"It's not spherical," she said. "I always say potato-shaped because potatoes come in many shapes, so I'm not wrong."
...
"We’re never going to get to our metal core (inside Earth)," Elkins-Tanton said. "The pressures are too high. The temperatures are too hot. The technology is impossible. ... But there's one way in our Solar System that we can look at a metal core, and that is by going to this asteroid.

“We’ve visited bodies that are made of rock," Elkins-Tanton said. "We've visited icy asteroids. We've looked at comets and the last ... category of objects that we've never visited as a species in our Solar System is bodies made of metal. So this is primary exploration, a new kind of object that humans have never seen before."

Artist's illustration of NASA's Psyche spacecraft, as it will appear with its solar arrays unfurled in space.  NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Fun fact: those solar arrays will generate 20 kW when they're unfolded here near Earth after launch; at 16 Psyche's orbit that will drop to 2 kW. 

All of the major components for the Falcon Heavy are in process and are looking to be ready in time.  The mission will re-use the side boosters from the most recent Falcon Heavy launch of the Jupiter 3 communications satellite, which featured return to launch site (RTLS) booster recoveries.  The Psyche flight will also return the two boosters to landing zones 1 & 2 on the Cape.  After this flight, they will be held for the Europa Clipper mission in October '24.  While the psyche mission, like the Jupiter 3 mission, will expend the center booster core, there are reports the Europa Clipper mission will expend all three Falcon 9 cores.