In September 2015, NASA selected five mission concepts from a field of 27 to proceed to the next stage (step 2) of the latest Discovery mission competition. Each team submitted a Mission Concept Study to NASA in August 2016, and in January of 2017 NASA selected Psyche and a second mission for flight. This paper describes Psyche, a unique investigation of a metal world, which is the only one of the original five mission concepts studied in detail to propose the use of Electric Propulsion (EP) to accomplish its mission objectives. Psyche will harness commercially developed EP and space power systems with strong system-level heritage to accomplish a deep space NASA science mission at comparatively low technical-risk and cost-risk. This paper describes the Psyche mission concept and the unique Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) architecture that allows the use of SSL's commercial SPT-140 Hall thruster propulsion system at solar distances of up to 3.3 AU with only minimal modifications. Building on previous work analyzing SEP systems for Discovery-class missions, this paper describes the heritage, design, and testing which have been conducted on the power and propulsion systems to develop the Psyche mission, addresses the differences between GEO and deep-space environments, and describes actions taken to ensure that GEO heritage systems can be operated reliably in deep-space.
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机译：2015年9月，美国宇航局从27个领域选择了五个任务概念，以进入下一阶段（第2步）的最新发现使命竞争。每支球队于2016年8月向美国国家航空航天局提交了一项使命概念研究，2017年1月美国宇航局选择了精神和飞行第二任务。本文描述了灵魂，对金属世界的独特调查，这是详细研究的原始五个任务概念中唯一的一个，提出使用电动推进（EP）来实现其使命目标。 Psyche将利用商业开发的EP和空间电力系统，具有强大的系统级别遗产，以在相对较低的技术风险和成本风险上实现深空的美国航空航天局科学任务。本文介绍了灵魂特派团概念和独特的太阳能电动推进（SEP）架构，允许使用SSL的商业SPT-140霍尔推进器推进系统，在太阳能距离高达3.3 AU，只有最小的修改。在以前的工作中，分析SEP Systems for Discovery Class任务，介绍了在能够开发灵魂使命的电力和推进系统上进行的遗产，设计和测试，解决了地理和深空环境之间的差异，并描述采取的行动确保在深空中可以可靠地操作地理遗产系统。
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