NASA’s Psyche spacecraft hits a speed bump on the way to a metal asteroid

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, currently nearly 150 million miles from Earth en route to an unexplored metal asteroid, has halted its engine operations after detecting an issue in its propulsion system. The spacecraft shut off its plasma thrusters earlier this month due to a decrease in fuel pressure, which was identified on April 1 in the line supplying xenon fuel to its thrusters. NASA’s engineers are actively investigating the cause of this fuel pressure drop, as communicated in a recent update shared by NASA science chief Nicky Fox.

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