(October 13, 2023)

To accomplish the rest of the mission, the van-size spacecraft will rely on its new solar electric propulsion system, powered by Hall-effect thrusters, Oh said. The thrusters will utilize the spacecraft’s large solar arrays and “use electricity to ionize xenon gas and accelerate those charged ions through an electric field to very, very high speeds,” Oh said. (…)

Also along for the ride is the Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration, or DSOC. Occurring during the first two years of the journey to Psyche, it will be NASA’s most distant experiment of high-bandwidth laser communications, testing the sending and receiving of data to and from Earth using an invisible near-infrared laser.