NASA's Psyche mission, aimed at exploring the asteroid Psyche, has encountered a fuel pressure problem affecting the spacecraft's electric propulsion system. Initial investigations revealed a significant drop in pressure within the xenon gas fuel line, prompting the automatic shutdown of thrusters. The mission team has opted to delay thrust operations while evaluating the issue, noting that the spacecraft's design can withstand this pause until mid-June. With backup systems in place, mission officials maintain that the situation is likely manageable, although details on the severity of the problem remain uncertain until further analysis is completed.
According to NASA, this latest issue arose in very early April of this year, when the spacecraft's onboard system detected a pressure drop in the xenon gas fuel line to the thrusters, dipping from 36 pounds per square inch to 26 pounds per square inch. This, as designed, automatically triggered the spacecraft to shut off the propulsion system.
The mission design supports a pause in thrusting until at least mid-June before the spacecraft would see an effect on its trajectory. The electric propulsion system has two identical fuel lines, and the team may decide to switch to the backup fuel line to resume thrusting.
This kind of thing happens and that's why we build redundancy into our missions. We don't have any concerns at the moment about it but we're obviously keeping track of the situation closely.
Until we hear more from the mission engineers, there's no way of telling how serious the issue is. But odds are it's relatively trivial - snags like these crop up all the time in space missions.
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