NASA has plans to launch its Psyche aircraft in two days to probe a metal-filled asteroid.
In April of 2022, the US space agency revealed its newest spacecraft, designated Psyche.
AlamyNasa has plans to launch its Psyche aircraft in two days[/caption]
The instrument is designed for a mission to study a metal-rich asteroid with the same name.
Now, nearly a year and a half later, the craft is finally due for liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Thursday.
Psyche the asteroid is located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The asteroid is about 173 miles at its widest and comprises mainly metal.
This isn’t just a regular asteroid, though; it features enough metal to total a whopping $10,000 quadrillion should we ever be able to mine it.
“We have no technology for bringing Psyche back to Earth,” said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, principal investigator of the Psyche mission.
“There isn’t any way to do that. And then if we did, it would probably be a really bad day on Earth, because we also have no technology for putting it into a stable orbit,” she said.
Nasa said in a statement the metal-rich rock may derive from the core of a planetesimal, which is one of the building blocks of the rocky planets found in our solar system.
If this is indeed the case, the asteroid “could provide a unique opportunity to study how planets like our own Earth formed,” Nasa explained.
The mission is the 14th selected as part of Nasa’s Discovery Program and is being led by Arizona State University
However, Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at Caltech will handle the mission’s system engineering, tests, and mission operations.
JPL also developed an instrument called Deep Space Optical Communications that will launch with Psyche,
This device will assess “high-data-rate laser communications” that Nasa may use in future missions.
Psyche the spacecraft is expected to reach the asteroid sometime in 2026.