NASA Spacecraft Runs Into Thruster Trouble En Route to Zillion-Dollar Asteroid

NASA's Psyche mission to visit a gargantuan asteroid — worth, according to some estimates, more than the Earth's entire world economy — has hit a snag. On Tuesday, the space agency announced that engineers were investigating a sudden drop in fuel pressure in the Psyche spacecraft's electric propulsion system, which caused the thrusters to automatically shut off. While the mission team could send the command to fire the engines back up, it's chosen to defer thrusting while engineers try to troubleshoot the pressure decrease, NASA said. "The mission design supports a pause in thrusting until at least mid-June before the spacecraft would see an effect on its trajectory," NASA said in a release. "The electric propulsion system has two identical fuel lines, and the team may decide to switch to the backup fuel line to resume thrusting." Launched in October 2023, Psyche spent months coasting off the momentum from a rocket boost to beyond the orbit of Mars, before finally firing up its adva ... Read full article.