Other ground preparations required for the medium spacecraft include installing its deep space responder, which is part of the probe's communication system and had to be removed from the spacecraft to troubleshoot. Ground personnel also plan to load over one ton of xenon gas into the spacecraft's entire systempowerPropulsion system, then encapsulate the medium spacecraft inside the fairing of the Falcon Heavy carrier rocket.

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket will be launched from Kennedy's 39A launch pad to launch a medium spacecraft into an escape orbit far away from Earth, allowing the probe to reach Mars in May 2023 for a flyby and use Mars' gravity to fly towards the asteroid's destination.

The medium spacecraft will arrive at the Psyche asteroid in January 2026 and then enter a series of orbits at different distances to map the asteroid. Psyche is an irregularly shaped asteroid with an average diameter of approximately 226 kilometers, mainly composed of nickel and iron metals.

The three-and-a-half-year journey to the asteroid Psyche will span 2.4 billion kilometers. Spiritual mediumspacecraftWe plan to spend at least 21 months studying the asteroid Psyche after its arrival in 2026.

Two small spacecraft will carry the Falcon Heavy rocket into space. NASA's Janus probe binary, each weighing only 36 kilograms, will be launched on the same Falcon Heavy rocket as a medium and will fly over different asteroids in the asteroid belt of the solar system.

The medium was assembled and tested at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Commercial communication satellite manufacturer Maxar Technologies provided the probe with a base, propulsion system, and solar panels. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has extensive experience in deep space exploration, providing flight computers, software, and some communication and power systems. In 2017, NASA chose the medium mission as a discovery level interstellar exploration mission, but its cost was limited.

The medium mission is NASA's first use of SpaceX's Falcon HeavyrocketLaunch. The Falcon Heavy rocket is a heavy lift vehicle formed by connecting SpaceX's three Falcon 9 rocket boosters together. SpaceX launched the first three Falcon Heavy rocket missions in 2018 and 2019, but the interval between the third and fourth Falcon Heavy rocket flights exceeded three years.