Maxar Delivers Spacecraft Bus for NASA’s Psyche Mission
March 29 2021 - 3:01PM
Business Wire
The Solar Electric Propulsion chassis will
power Psyche on 1 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 (SEP)
Chassis to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the NASA
Discovery Mission, Psyche. The SEP Chassis is based on Maxar’s
1300-class platform, the world’s most trusted spacecraft, which
provided NASA the opportunity to budget, design and build the
historic Psyche mission on flight-proven, commercially developed
hardware.
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Maxar engineers prepare the Psyche
spacecraft bus for transport to NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. (Photo:
Business Wire)
The NASA Psyche mission is expected to launch in August 2022 to
explore an asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, which is
likely made largely of metal and may be core material from an early
planet. The Psyche spacecraft will travel more than 1 billion miles
and arrive at the asteroid in 2026, where it will spend 21 months
orbiting the 140 mile-wide asteroid, mapping it and studying its
properties.
The SEP Chassis built for Psyche is Maxar’s lightest and
smallest graphite 1300-class spacecraft platform, roughly the size
of a small car. It is combined with a medium-sized solar array, a
high-gain antenna and Maxar’s latest solar electric propulsion
system. The spacecraft has been specifically designed to function
in a low-power environment because of the Psyche asteroid’s
distance from the sun.
“This mission is a dream come true. Maxar 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’s Senior
Vice President of Space Capture. "We are excited to leverage this
technology for a NASA deep space exploration mission and see great
promise for adapting it to support a range of critical government
space missions in the future.”
Maxar was selected in 2017 to provide the spacecraft platform
for the Psyche mission under a firm-fixed-price contract and has
now delivered all hardware on schedule. The company is working for
NASA JPL to support the mission’s Principal Investigator Lindy
Elkins-Tanton, who is a professor at Arizona State University’s
(ASU) School of Earth and Space Exploration.
“Seeing this big spacecraft chassis arrive at JPL from Maxar is
among the most thrilling of the milestones we’ve experienced on
what has already been a 10-year journey,” said Elkins-Tanton.
“Building this complex, precision piece of engineering during the
year of COVID is absolutely a triumph of human determination and
excellence.”
“The collaboration between the teams at Maxar, ASU and NASA’s
JPL has been astounding,” said Curbeam. “Each organization brought
their expertise to the program, blending philosophies of
commercial, government and academic institutions to come together
for one mission—to travel to an asteroid to better understand
Earth.”
In addition to Psyche, Maxar is also leveraging both its
1300-class platform and SEP technology for the NASA Gateway Power
and Propulsion Element under the Artemis Program. The 1300-class
platform has also been selected for NASA Goddard Spaceflight
Center’s OSAM-1 mission and will host NASA’s Tropospheric
Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument.
View photographs of the Psyche spacecraft here.
About Maxar
Maxar is a trusted partner and innovator in Earth Intelligence
and Space Infrastructure. We deliver disruptive value to government
and commercial customers to help them monitor, understand and
navigate our changing planet; deliver global broadband
communications; and explore and advance the use of space. Our
unique approach combines decades of deep mission understanding and
a proven commercial and defense foundation to deploy solutions and
deliver insights with unrivaled speed, scale and cost
effectiveness. Maxar’s 4,300 team members in over 20 global
locations 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 Toronto Stock Exchange as MAXR. For more
information, visit www.maxar.com.
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Investor Relations Contact: Jason Gursky Maxar VP,
Investor Relations and Corporate Treasurer 1-303-684-2207
jason.gursky@maxar.com
Media Contact: Abby Dickes Maxar Manager, Government
Marketing & Communications 202-750-0914
abby.dickes@maxar.com
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