CURRENT AFFAIRS

Detailed explanation-1: -Launch and trajectory As of October 2022, Psyche is scheduled to launch no earlier than October 10, 2023, on a Falcon Heavy vehicle. The cost of the launch is US$117 million.

Detailed explanation-2: -Psyche is a NASA mission that will explore a 140-mile-wide (225 kilometers) metallic asteroid called 16 Psyche. No spacecraft has ever visited an object like 16 Psyche, which is thought to be the exposed core of a demolished planet.

Detailed explanation-3: -On April 29, 2022, the Psyche spacecraft completed its journey from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Detailed explanation-4: -The Psyche mission science goals are to: Understand a previously unexplored building block of planet formation: iron cores. Look inside terrestrial planets, including Earth, by directly examining the interior of a differentiated body, which otherwise could not be seen. Explore a new type of world.