Where is Psyche right now?
Psyche is currently about 301,330,672 kilometres from Earth, roughly 2.01 astronomical units, or 16.8 light-minutes away, and 1.55 astronomical units from the Sun. It is thrusting outward toward the asteroid belt.
Psyche is aimed at 16 Psyche, a metal-rich asteroid around 220 km across in the outer main belt. The idea worth testing is that it is the exposed core of a small planet that lost its rock early on. Recent observations suggest a mix of metal and silicate rather than a bare ball of iron, which is a good reason to go and look rather than keep arguing about it.
The spacecraft launched on 13 October 2023 on a Falcon Heavy and flew past Mars on 15 May 2026, passing 4,500 km above the surface to bend its path outward. It is now in the phase the team calls Cruise 2: roughly 29 months of near-continuous thrusting, climbing into the belt for an arrival in August 2029.
It runs on ion engines. Four Hall-effect thrusters ionise xenon and throw it out at high speed, producing about as much force as the weight of an AA battery resting in your hand, sustained for years on end. It carries 922 kg of xenon to do it with.
It also carried a laser. The Deep Space Optical Communications experiment sent 13.6 terabits back to Earth, once from 494 million km away, before its final pass on 2 September 2025.