Preparing for Psyche’s Solar Array Deployment

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California examine one of Psyche's stowed solar arrays prior to a deployment test in the Lab's High Bay 2 clean room in late February 2022. The twin arrays are together about 800 square feet (75 square meters) – the largest ever deployed at JPL. Part of a solar electric propulsion system provided by Maxar Technologies, they will power the spacecraft on its 1.5 billion-mile (2.4 billion-kilometer) journey to the large, metal-rich asteroid Psyche.