Lifeboat Foundation

Engineers and technicians at Cape Canaveral are preparing the Psyche spacecraft for liftoff, which is slated for October 5.

With less than 100 days remaining before its October 5 launch, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is undergoing final preparations at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Teams of engineers and technicians are working diligently, essentially around the clock, to ensure the orbiter is ready to journey 2.5 billion miles (4 billion kilometers) to a metal-rich asteroid that may tell us more about planetary cores and how planets form.

The mission team recently completed a comprehensive test campaign of the flight software and installed it on the spacecraft, clearing the hurdle that kept Psyche from making its original 2022 launch date.