NASA has turned on the electric Hall thrusters of Psyche, a spacecraft that’s now gently motoring toward a metal-rich asteroid embedded in the main asteroid belt beyond Mars. The agency says Psyche is in “full cruise” mode now, six months after launching on October 13th, 2023, on a conventional, SpaceX rocket.

On the way, NASA used Psyche to test laser-based deep space communications. The craft shot a communications laser back at the Earth from close to 10 million miles out, which is a…