PI Daily, July 2024

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.

Here we are on @MissionToPsyche Day 292, and it continues to blow my mind how fast the spacecraft is going wrt the Earth–44.5 kilometers per second today! It's because the two are almost going in opposite directions right now. #PI_Daily pic.twitter.com/xyNVQf03Y5

— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) July 30, 2024

Day 272 @MissionToPsyche: After ~9 months in flight, the spacecraft has traveled ~600 million km, done more than 2,000 hours of EP thrusting, using ~ 100 kg of Xenon propellant. #PI_Daily
Graph: Earth and Psyche moving in opposite directions, so relative velocity is high. pic.twitter.com/kAjyJdecVo

— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) July 10, 2024

Designing and then building the spacecraft, part by part, and writing flight software from scratch to control the whole thing. And testing and testing and testing. And scheduling and budgeting and writing and media…amazing people! @MissionToPsyche #PI_Daily

— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) July 8, 2024

July @MissionToPsyche report: The Psyche spacecraft is stable and healthy in Nominal mode, currently 2.22 au from the Sun and 2.69 au from Earth.
Isn't it amazing what humans can do? (Here's a part of our team that was at launch in Florida last year.) #PI_Daily pic.twitter.com/B9Rn6TToSg

— Lindy Elkins-Tanton (@ltelkins) July 3, 2024