On Tuesday (April 29), NASA announced that its Psyche probe has suffered a setback concerning its propulsion system while nearly 150 million miles (238 million kilometers) from our planet. The boxy, solar-winged craft is headed to the peculiar object for which it is named: 16 Psyche, an asteroid that appears to have an unusually high metal content.
The complication surrounds a "decrease in fuel pressure" within Psyche's solar electric propulsion setup, NASA says, which led the team to power off the thrusters until a solution arises. However, the agency also affirms that these thrusters can remain off until at least mid-June before worries arise about Psyche's trajectory toward its asteroid target. "The mission team has chosen to defer thrusting while engineers work to understand the pressure decrease," NASA said in a statement. "The electric propulsion system has two identical fuel lines, and the team may decide to switch to the backup fuel line to resume thrusting."
