IEEE Paper - Systems Engineering of the Psyche Payload

The Psyche mission is a journey to a unique metal asteroid of the same name, (16) Psyche, orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Slated for launch in October of 2023, Psyche seeks to answer questions about the formation of planets and explore what may be an exposed nickel-iron core of an early planetesimal, similar to the one hidden at the center of our own Earth. The mission is led by Arizona State University. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is responsible for mission management, systems engineering, operations, navigation, and some subsystems including command and data handling and telecommunications. This paper focuses on the Psyche Payload system, which consists of a multispectral imager, a magnetometer, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer (GRNS), and a deep space optical communications (DSOC) experiment. GRNS will measure the asteroid’s composition, the magnetometer will determine whether Psyche is a core by measuring any remnant magnetic field, and the imager will map its surface and characterize its topography. DSOC is a technology demonstration hosted by the Psyche spacecraft and intended to pave the way for low-power/high-bandwidth communications in deep space using individual photons to encode and transmit information. This paper focuses on the Payload development efforts and key systems engineering processes that made it possible including requirements development, risk reduction activities, key challenges and anomalies, verification and validation, and the final stretch to launch during assembly and test with the integrated spacecraft.