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Solar electric propulsion chassis will propel Psyche on a billion-mile journey to a metal-rich asteroid
Maxar Technologies (NYSE: MAXR) (TSX: MAXR), a trusted partner and innovator in Earth intelligence and space infrastructure, today announced the delivery of the Solar Electric Propulsion Chassis (SEP ) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the discovery of the NASA Mission, Psyche. The SEP chassis is based on Maxar’s 1300-class platform, the world’s most reliable spacecraft, which provided NASA with the ability to budget, design and build the historic Psyche mission on commercially developed hardware proven in flight.
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Maxar engineers prepare the Psyche spacecraft bus for transport to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. (Photo: Business Wire)
NASA’s Psyche mission is slated to launch in August 2022 to explore an asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, which is likely made up largely of metal and could be the basic material of a primitive planet. The Psyche spacecraft will travel over a billion kilometers and arrive at the asteroid in 2026, where it will spend 21 months orbiting the 140 km-wide asteroid, mapping it and studying its properties.
The SEP chassis built for Psyche is Maxar’s lightest and smallest 1300-class graphite spacecraft platform, roughly the size of a small car. It is combined with a mid-size solar panel, high gain antenna and the latest solar electric propulsion system from Maxar. The spacecraft has been specially designed to operate in a low power environment due to the distance between the asteroid Psyche and the sun.
“This mission is a dream come true. Maxar has developed the world’s most advanced solar electric propulsion capabilities to reduce program costs and enable long duration missions for commercial communications satellites, ”said Robert Curbeam, Maxar senior vice president for space capture . “We are excited to leverage this technology for a NASA deep space exploration mission and see great promise in adapting it to support a range of critical government space missions in the future.
Maxar was selected in 2017 to provide the spaceship platform for the Psyche mission on a firm price contract and has now delivered all equipment on time. The company is working for NASA’s JPL to support mission principal investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton, who is a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University (ASU).
“Seeing this big spaceship chassis arrive at Maxar’s JPL is one of the most exciting milestones we’ve seen on what has already been a 10-year journey,” said Elkins-Tanton. “Building this complex, precision piece of engineering during the COVID year is absolutely a triumph of human determination and excellence.”
“The collaboration between the teams at Maxar, ASU and NASA’s JPL has been astounding,” Curbeam said. “Each organization brought their expertise to the program, mixing the philosophies of commercial, government and academic institutions to come together around a mission: to travel to an asteroid to better understand Earth.
In addition to Psyche, Maxar also takes advantage of its 1300-class platform and SEP technology for the power and propulsion element of the NASA Gateway as part of the Artemis program. The 1300-class platform has also been selected for NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center OSAM-1 mission and will host NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument.
View photos of the Psyche spaceship here.
About Maxar
Maxar is a trusted partner and innovator in the fields of Earth intelligence and space infrastructure. We deliver disruptive value to governments and business customers to help them monitor, understand and navigate our changing planet; provide global broadband communications; and explore and advance the use of space. Our unique approach combines decades of deep understanding of the mission and a proven business and defense foundation to deploy solutions and deliver insights with unmatched speed, scale and cost effectiveness. Maxar’s 4,300 team members at over 20 locations around the world are inspired to harness the potential of space to help our customers create a better world. Maxar trades on the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange under the name MAXR. For more information, visit www.maxar.com.
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See the source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210329005715/en/
Contacts
Investor Relations Contact:
Jason gursky
Maxar VP, Investor Relations and Corporate Treasurer
1-303-684-2207
[email protected]
Media contact:
Abby dickes
Maxar Manager, Government Marketing and Communications
202-750-0914
[email protected]
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