PI Daily, December 2023
By Lindy Elkins-Tanton Starting January 1, 2020…
a new series of daily mission activity Tweets from Psyche Principal Investigator (PI) Lindy Elkins-Tanton.
#PI_Daily
The goal? To share an inside look at the chores, challenges, tasks, assignments, duties, and more taken on by a NASA mission PI!
Follow along on @MissionToPsyche or below.
More news on this very first imager test — first light — coming shortly! @MissionToPsyche spacecraft is now over 87 light-seconds distant, and over 68 times farther from us than the Moon. #PI_Daily https://t.co/5PPR8ISOLC
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) December 5, 2023
And @MissionToPsyche is 89 light-seconds away, and our beautiful @JHUAPL Gamma-Ray Spectrometer is awake and performing beautifully! Next week our final science instrument comes on: the Neutron Spectrometers. #PI_Dailyhttps://t.co/tPSxMIQJv6
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) December 6, 2023
Back at @NASAJPL for @MissionToPsyche operations.
Checking audio around the team so far, position by position: "Avionics, how do you read me?" "Flight, 5by, howme?" "5by, thank you." Translation… (1/2) #PI_Daily pic.twitter.com/dJMxbONMSF— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) December 11, 2023
Last night around midnight at the @NASAJPL flight operations center, there to sit with the DSOC team and experience high-speed laser data streaming from 0.2 AU away, 79 times farther than the Moon. @MissionToPsyche #PI_Daily pic.twitter.com/66Uvmb6nkN
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) December 12, 2023
The @MissionToPsyche is now on Day 4 of the 7-day Long Duration System Test. This test consists primarily of thrusting with the elec. propulsion system, to show the s/c is ready for normal cruise. (1/2) #PI_Daily pic.twitter.com/hxpMdsVgUg
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) December 16, 2023
Big @MissionToPsyche news! CAT VIDEOS from space.
Seriously, the Deep Space Optical Comms tech demo demonstrated streaming data from space at – get this – 267 megabits per second, from more than 70 times the distance of the Moon! Huge success! #PI_Dailyhttps://t.co/QNRwqss8Cm
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) December 19, 2023
Psyche is 93.8 times farther away than the Moon! And our long-duration thrust test is complete. We are now downloading data to analyze. @MissionToPsyche #PI_Daily pic.twitter.com/q0X9oH4Y6k
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) December 20, 2023
Good morning from the @MissionToPsyche spacecraft. All is nominal (that's ideal, in s/c terms), mission day 78, and the craft is 113 times farther than the Moon, a one-way light time travel of 2.4 minutes. 😀🛰️🚀 #PI_Daily pic.twitter.com/E7gG1hGtcF
— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) December 29, 2023