We’ve been following this upcoming mission since 2021. With all pre-launch issues now well-resolved… NASA is touting this slightly-delayed trip, to a metal rich asteroid that may have been, about 3 million years ago, the core of a planetesimal — stripped, by a series of collisions.

Here are all those latest details, from NASA:

…NASA is inviting the public to take part in virtual activities ahead of the launch of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft. The Psyche spacecraft will travel about 2.2 billion miles to study a metal-rich asteroid of the same name. The asteroid, which lies in the outer portion of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, may be part of a core of a planetesimal (a building block of a planet) and can tell us more about planetary cores and Earth’s own formation.

Psyche is targeting liftoff at 10:16 a.m. EDT on Thursday, Oct. 12, on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft also is hosting a technology demonstration, NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC), which will be the first test of laser communications beyond the Moon….

To be certain, as the above graphic indicates, this is a long term cruise (2929-ish or so) just to get into position to do the science. But well worth Seamus Heany’s “commanded journey“, indeed. Now you know… grinning into a fine Sunday afternoon — heading to town art fairs, with my baby girl… smile.

नमस्ते