This photograph shows an overall view of the Solar Thermal Propulsion Test Facility at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). The 20-by 24-ft heliostat mirror, shown at the left, has dual-axis control that keeps a reflection of the sunlight on an 18-ft diameter concentrator mirror (right). The concentrator mirror then focuses the sunlight to a 4-in focal point inside the vacuum chamber, shown at the front of concentrator mirror. Researchers at MSFC have designed, fabricated, and tested the first solar thermal engine, a non-chemical rocket engine that produces lower thrust but has better thrust efficiency than chemical a combustion engine. MSFC turned to solar thermal propulsion in the early 1990s due to its simplicity, safety, low cost, and commonality with other propulsion systems. Solar thermal propulsion works by acquiring and redirecting solar energy to heat a propell nt. As part of MSFC's Space Transportation Directorate, the Propulsion Research Center serves as a national resource for research of advanced, revolutionary propulsion technologies. The mission is to move the Nation's capabilities beyond the confines of conventional chemical propulsion into an era of aircraft-like access to Earth-orbit, rapid travel throughout the solar system, and exploration of interstellar space.

Researchers at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) have designed, fabricated, and tested the first solar thermal engine, a non-chemical rocket engine that produces lower thrust but has better thrust efficiency than a chemical combustion engine. MSFC turned to solar thermal propulsion in the early 1990s due to its simplicity, safety, low cost, and commonality with other propulsion systems. Solar thermal propulsion works by acquiring and redirecting solar energy to heat a propellant. This photograph shows a fully assembled solar thermal engine placed inside the vacuum chamber at the test facility prior to testing. The 20- by 24-ft heliostat mirror (not shown in this photograph) has a dual-axis control that keeps a reflection of the sunlight on the 18-ft diameter concentrator mirror, which then focuses the sunlight to a 4-in focal point inside the vacuum chamber. The focal point has 10 kilowatts of intense solar power. As part of MSFC's Space Transportation Directorate, the Propulsion Research Center serves as a national resource for research of advanced, revolutionary propulsion technologies. The mission is to move theNation's capabilities beyond the confines of conventional chemical propulsion into an era of aircraft-like access to Earth orbit, rapid travel throughout the solar system, and exploration of interstellar space.

Researchers at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) have designed, fabricated and tested the first solar thermal engine, a non-chemical rocket engine that produces lower thrust but has better thrust efficiency than a chemical combustion engine. MSFC turned to solar thermal propulsion in the early 1990s due to its simplicity, safety, low cost, and commonality with other propulsion systems. Solar thermal propulsion works by acquiring and redirecting solar energy to heat a propellant. This photograph, taken at MSFC's Solar Thermal Propulsion Test Facility, shows a concentrator mirror, a combination of 144 mirrors forming this 18-ft diameter concentrator, and a vacuum chamber that houses the focal point. The 20- by 24-ft heliostat mirror (not shown in this photograph) has a dual-axis control that keeps a reflection of the sunlight on the 18-foot diameter concentrator mirror, which then focuses the sunlight to a 4-in focal point inside the vacuum chamber. The focal point has 10 kilowatts of intense solar power. As part of MSFC's Space Transportation Directorate, the Propulsion Research Center serves as a national resource for research of advanced, revolutionary propulsion technologies. The mission is to move the Nation's capabilities beyond the confines of conventional chemical propulsion into an era of aircraft-like access to Earth-orbit, rapid travel throughout the solar system, and exploration of interstellar space.

Researchers at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) have designed, fabricated, and tested the first solar thermal engine, a non-chemical rocket engine that produces lower thrust but has better thrust efficiency than a chemical combustion engine. MSFC turned to solar thermal propulsion in the early 1990s due to its simplicity, safety, low cost, and commonality with other propulsion systems. Solar thermal propulsion works by acquiring and redirecting solar energy to heat a propellant. The 20- by 24-ft heliostat mirror (not shown in this photograph) has dual-axis control that keeps a reflection of the sunlight on an 18-ft diameter concentrator mirror, which then focuses the sunlight to a 4-in focal point inside the vacuum chamber. The focal point has 10 kilowatts of intense solar power. This photograph is a close-up view of a 4-in focal point inside the vacuum chamber at the MSFC Solar Thermal Propulsion Test facility. As part of MSFC's Space Transportation Directorate, the Propulsion Research Center serves as a national resource for research of advanced, revolutionary propulsion technologies. The mission is to move the Nation's capabilities beyond the confines of conventional chemical propulsion into an era of aircraft-like access to Earth orbit, rapid travel throughout the solar system, and exploration of interstellar space.

NASA’s In-Space Propulsion Facility located at Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky Ohio is the world’s only high altitude test facility capable of full-scale rocket engine and launch vehicle system level tests. The facility supports mission profile thermal vacuum simulation and engine firing. The engine or vehicle can be exposed for indefinite periods to low ambient pressures, low-background temperatures, and dynamic solar heating, simulating the environment the hardware will encounter during orbital or interplanetary travel. Photo Credit: (NASA/Jordan Salkin)

NASA’s In-Space Propulsion Facility located at Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky Ohio is the world’s only high altitude test facility capable of full-scale rocket engine and launch vehicle system level tests. The facility supports mission profile thermal vacuum simulation and engine firing. The engine or vehicle can be exposed for indefinite periods to low ambient pressures, low-background temperatures, and dynamic solar heating, simulating the environment the hardware will encounter during orbital or interplanetary travel. Photo Credit: (NASA/Jordan Salkin)

NASA’s In-Space Propulsion Facility located at Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky Ohio is the world’s only high altitude test facility capable of full-scale rocket engine and launch vehicle system level tests. The facility supports mission profile thermal vacuum simulation and engine firing. The engine or vehicle can be exposed for indefinite periods to low ambient pressures, low-background temperatures, and dynamic solar heating, simulating the environment the hardware will encounter during orbital or interplanetary travel. Photo Credit: (NASA/Jordan Salkin)

NASA’s In-Space Propulsion Facility located at Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky Ohio is the world’s only high altitude test facility capable of full-scale rocket engine and launch vehicle system level tests. The facility supports mission profile thermal vacuum simulation and engine firing. The engine or vehicle can be exposed for indefinite periods to low ambient pressures, low-background temperatures, and dynamic solar heating, simulating the environment the hardware will encounter during orbital or interplanetary travel. Photo Credit: (NASA/Jordan Salkin)

NASA’s In-Space Propulsion Facility located at Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky Ohio is the world’s only high altitude test facility capable of full-scale rocket engine and launch vehicle system level tests. The facility supports mission profile thermal vacuum simulation and engine firing. The engine or vehicle can be exposed for indefinite periods to low ambient pressures, low-background temperatures, and dynamic solar heating, simulating the environment the hardware will encounter during orbital or interplanetary travel. Photo Credit: (NASA/Jordan Salkin)

NASA’s In-Space Propulsion Facility located at Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky Ohio is the world’s only high altitude test facility capable of full-scale rocket engine and launch vehicle system level tests. The facility supports mission profile thermal vacuum simulation and engine firing. The engine or vehicle can be exposed for indefinite periods to low ambient pressures, low-background temperatures, and dynamic solar heating, simulating the environment the hardware will encounter during orbital or interplanetary travel. Photo Credit: (NASA/Jordan Salkin)

NASA’s In-Space Propulsion Facility located at Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky Ohio is the world’s only high altitude test facility capable of full-scale rocket engine and launch vehicle system level tests. The facility supports mission profile thermal vacuum simulation and engine firing. The engine or vehicle can be exposed for indefinite periods to low ambient pressures, low-background temperatures, and dynamic solar heating, simulating the environment the hardware will encounter during orbital or interplanetary travel. Photo Credit: (NASA/Jordan Salkin)

NASA’s In-Space Propulsion Facility located at Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky Ohio is the world’s only high altitude test facility capable of full-scale rocket engine and launch vehicle system level tests. The facility supports mission profile thermal vacuum simulation and engine firing. The engine or vehicle can be exposed for indefinite periods to low ambient pressures, low-background temperatures, and dynamic solar heating, simulating the environment the hardware will encounter during orbital or interplanetary travel. Photo Credit: (NASA/Jordan Salkin)

NASA’s In-Space Propulsion Facility located at Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky Ohio is the world’s only high altitude test facility capable of full-scale rocket engine and launch vehicle system level tests. The facility supports mission profile thermal vacuum simulation and engine firing. The engine or vehicle can be exposed for indefinite periods to low ambient pressures, low-background temperatures, and dynamic solar heating, simulating the environment the hardware will encounter during orbital or interplanetary travel. Photo Credit: (NASA/Jordan Salkin)

NASA’s In-Space Propulsion Facility located at Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky Ohio is the world’s only high altitude test facility capable of full-scale rocket engine and launch vehicle system level tests. The facility supports mission profile thermal vacuum simulation and engine firing. The engine or vehicle can be exposed for indefinite periods to low ambient pressures, low-background temperatures, and dynamic solar heating, simulating the environment the hardware will encounter during orbital or interplanetary travel. Photo Credit: (NASA/Jordan Salkin)

NASA’s In-Space Propulsion Facility located at Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Sandusky Ohio is the world’s only high altitude test facility capable of full-scale rocket engine and launch vehicle system level tests. The facility supports mission profile thermal vacuum simulation and engine firing. The engine or vehicle can be exposed for indefinite periods to low ambient pressures, low-background temperatures, and dynamic solar heating, simulating the environment the hardware will encounter during orbital or interplanetary travel. This is a view from inside the chamber looking up toward the American flag. Photo Credit: (NASA/Jordan Salkin)

An engineer working on NASA's Mars 2020 mission uses a solar intensity probe to measure and compare the amount of artificial sunlight that reaches different portions of the rover. To simulate the Sun's rays for the test, powerful xenon lamps several floors below the chamber were illuminated, their light directed onto a mirror at the top of the chamber and reflected down on the spacecraft. The data collected during this test will be used to confirm thermal models the team has generated regarding how the Sun's rays will interact with the 2020 rover while on the surface of Mars. The image was taken on Oct. 14, 2019, in the Space Simulator Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA23469

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- After covering the bulk of Deep Space 1 in thermal insulating blankets, workers in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility lift it from its work platform before moving it onto its transporter (behind workers at left). Deep Space 1 is being moved to the Defense Satellite Communications System Processing Facility (DPF), Cape Canaveral Air Station, for testing. At either side of the spacecraft are its solar wings, folded for launch. When fully extended, the wings measure 38.6 feet from tip to tip. The first flight in NASA's New Millennium Program, Deep Space 1 is designed to validate 12 new technologies for scientific space missions of the next century. Onboard experiments include a solar-powered ion propulsion engine and software that tracks celestial bodies so the spacecraft can make its own navigation decisions without the intervention of ground controllers. The ion propulsion engine is the first non-chemical propulsion to be used as the primary means of propelling a spacecraft. Deep Space 1 will complete most of its mission objectives within the first two months, but may also do a flyby of a near-Earth asteroid, 1992 KD, in July 1999. Deep Space 1 will be launched aboard a Boeing Delta 7326 rocket from Launch Pad 17A, Cape Canaveral Air Station, in October. Delta II rockets are medium capacity expendable launch vehicles derived from the Delta family of rockets built and launched since 1960. Since then there have been more than 245 Delta launches

A major component of NASA's Psyche spacecraft has been delivered to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the phase known as assembly, test, and launch operations (ATLO) is now underway. This photo, shot March 28, 2021 shows engineers and technicians preparing to move the Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) Chassis from its shipping container to a dolly in High Bay 1 of JPL's Spacecraft Assembly Facility. The photo was captured just after the chassis was delivered to JPL by Maxar Technologies. Maxar's team in Palo Alto, California, designed and built the SEP Chassis, which includes all the primary and secondary structure and the hardware components needed for the high-power electrical system, the propulsion system, the thermal system, guidance and navigation sensors and actuators, and the high-gain antenna. Over the next year, additional hardware will be added to the spacecraft including the command and data handling system, a power distribution assembly, the X-band telecommunications hardware suite, three science instruments (two imagers, two magnetometers, and a gamma ray neutron Spectrometer), and a deep space optical communications technology demonstrator. The spacecraft will finish assembly and then undergo rigorous checkout and testing before being shipped to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, for an August 2022 launch to the main asteroid belt. Psyche will arrive at the metal-rich asteroid of the same name in 2026, orbiting for 21 months to investigate its composition. Scientists think that Psyche is made up of mostly iron and nickel — similar to Earth's core. Exploring the asteroid could give valuable insight into how our own planet and others formed. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA24475

A major component of NASA's Psyche spacecraft has been delivered to the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the phase known as assembly, test, and launch operations (ATLO) is now underway. Taken on March 28, 2021, this photo shows the Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) Chassis just after it was delivered to JPL by Maxar Technologies. Here, the chassis is about to be attached to the dolly in High Bay 1 of JPL's Spacecraft Assembly Facility. Maxar's team in Palo Alto, California, designed and built the SEP Chassis, which includes all the primary and secondary structure and the hardware components needed for the high-power electrical system, the propulsion system, the thermal system, guidance and navigation sensors and actuators, and the high-gain antenna. Over the next year additional hardware will be added to the spacecraft, including the command and data handling system, a power distribution assembly, the X-band telecommunications hardware suite, three science instruments (two imagers, two magnetometers, and a Gamma Ray Neutron Spectrometer), and a deep space optical communications technology demonstrator. The spacecraft will finish assembly and then undergo rigorous checkout and testing before being shipped to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, for an August 2022 launch to the main asteroid belt. Psyche will arrive at the metal-rich asteroid of the same name in 2026, orbiting for 21 months to investigate its composition. Scientists think that Psyche is made up of mostly iron and nickel — similar to Earth's core. Exploring the asteroid could give valuable insight into how our own planet and others formed. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA24474

The Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) Chassis of NASA's Psyche spacecraft is mounted onto a rotation fixture in High Bay 1 of the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. This photo was taken March 28, 2021, just after the chassis — a major component of the Psyche spacecraft — was delivered to JPL by Maxar Technologies. Maxar's team in Palo Alto, California, designed and built the chassis, which includes all the primary and secondary structure and the hardware components needed for the high-power electrical system, the propulsion system, the thermal system, guidance and navigation sensors and actuators, and the high-gain antenna. The phase known as assembly test, and launch operations (ATLO) for Psyche is now underway at JPL. In this photo, ATLO Mechanical Lead Michelle Colizzi of JPL oversees the docking of the chassis to the dolly. Over the next year additional hardware will be added to the spacecraft including the command and data handling system, a power distribution assembly, the X-band telecommunications hardware suite, three science instruments (two imagers, two magnetometers, and a Gamma Ray Neutron Spectrometer), and a deep space optical communications technology demonstrator. The spacecraft will finish assembly and then undergo rigorous checkout and testing, before it's shipped to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, for an August 2022 launch to the main asteroid belt. Psyche will arrive at the metal-rich asteroid of the same name in 2026, orbiting for 21 months to investigate its composition. Scientists think that Psyche is made up of mostly iron and nickel — similar to Earth's core. Exploring the asteroid could give valuable insight into how our own planet and others formed. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA24476

The instrument enclosure of NASA's Near-Earth Object Surveyor is prepared for critical environmental tests inside the historic Chamber A at the Space Environment Simulation Laboratory at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston in December 2024. Wrapped in silver thermal blanketing, the 12-foot-long (3.7-meter-long) angular structure was subjected to the frigid, airless conditions that the spacecraft will experience when in deep space. The cavernous thermal-vacuum test facility is famous for testing the Apollo spacecraft that traveled to the Moon in the 1960s and '70s. The instrument enclosure is designed to protect the spacecraft's infrared telescope while also removing heat from it during operations. After environmental testing was completed, the enclosure returned to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California for further work, after which it will ship to the Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) in Logan, Utah, and be joined to the telescope. Both the instrument enclosure and telescope were assembled at JPL. As NASA's first space-based detection mission specifically designed for planetary defense, NEO Surveyor will seek out, measure, and characterize the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that might pose a hazard to Earth. While many near-Earth objects don't reflect much visible light, they glow brightly in infrared light due to heating by the Sun. The spacecraft's telescope, which has an aperture of nearly 20 inches (50 centimeters), features detectors sensitive to two infrared wavelengths in which near-Earth objects re-radiate solar heat. Targeting launch in late 2027, the NEO Surveyor mission is led by Prof. Amy Mainzer at UCLA for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office and is being managed by JPL for the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. BAE Systems, SDL, and Teledyne are among the companies that were contracted to build the spacecraft and its instrumentation. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder will support operations, and Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California, is responsible for producing some of the mission's data products. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA26583