Why NASA’s Psyche Spacecraft Is Being Shaken Up And Baked

The testing process includes shaking the spacecraft in what is called vibration testing when it is put on a special vibrating table that shakes the craft both up and down and side to side. Then there’s shock testing, which tests whether the craft can survive the jolt when it disconnects from the rocket, and acoustic testing where it’s subjected to the acoustic loads it will undergo during launch, as well (via Psyche).

Some of the biggest challenges for any spacecraft, though, are temperature variations. That’s because the spacecraft will not only get very hot during launch or when parts of it are facing the sun, but also very cold when it’s deep in space and passing through a shadow. So JPL rolls the spacecraft into an enormous vacuum chamber 85 feet tall for a procedure called thermal-vacuum (TVAC) testing. The air is removed from the chamber to test whether the spacecraft can heat and cool without air passing over it.

“Here on Earth, when you have air around the spacecraft, that changes how heat moves around it. Picture having a fan blowing on you that changes your temperature. In space, we don’t have that kind of heat movement,” said JPL flight systems engineer Kristina Hogstrom.

Psyche went through 18 days of testing in the vacuum chamber, including being subjected to the hottest and coldest temperatures that it is expected to encounter during its mission. With all the testing complete, the spacecraft will now be shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida where it is scheduled to launch on August 1.