Lessons Learned from the Implementation of the Psyche Fixed Price Contract with Maxar

The Psyche project was selected in January 2017 to send a spacecraft to orbit and investigate the (16) Psyche asteroid, which is the largest Class-M metallic asteroid in the solar system, and is believed to be mostly composed of iron and nickel metal. The Psyche project is a new partnership for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the NASA community with Maxar Space, formally Space Systems Loral. It also represents a new concept for the development and production of a spacecraft for JPL in that it represents a hybrid combination of the organizations' key competencies. Maxar is a leading provider of high-power GEO spacecraft for the telecommunications industry, and is a world leader in the utilization of Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) for satellite orbit raising and station-keeping. JPL has a long history of deep space missions and is considered a center of excellence in deep space communications, guidance and navigations, flight software, and autonomy. The Psyche spacecraft combines these core-capabilities from each organization to provide a high-power SEP vehicle capable of autonomous deep space operation out to the asteroid belt. The Psyche architecture follows the Dawn mission that sent a SEP spacecraft to Vesta and Ceres. In order to ensure the mission fits within a Discovery Class budget, the Psyche Spacecraft utilizes high heritage systems based on Maxar's 1300 solar electric propulsion geo-communications satellite from their production line. JPL is providing the telecommunications system, avionics suite, and software/autonomy systems, which have evolved from the Juno mission and multiple Mars missions. The purpose of this paper is to describe the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Maxar collaboration, with a fixed-price contractual setup, present the key decisions, including lessons learned from this new partnership. This paper will involve all aspects of this process from the implementation stage of the Project PMSR through the current stage of the project as we get ready for the environmental test campaign