NASA has shown off the massive solar arrays that will help power its Psyche spacecraft to a distant asteroid of the same name later this year.
A video shared by NASA this week shows the spacecraft’s twin solar arrays opening to their full length of 37 feet during a test exercise at the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
Covering 800 square feet — about the size of a singles tennis court — the spacecraft’s five-panel, cross-shaped solar arrays are the largest ever installed at JPL, NASA said. With the arrays fully open, the Psyche spacecraft will take about three-and-a-half years to travel 1.5 billion miles to the metal-rich Psyche asteroid, which is 173 miles at its widest point and said by NASA to be shaped “somewhat like a potato.”