NASA: Greenlight for the Untold Treasures asteroid mission

After resolving technical issues that led to a year-long delay, NASA is preparing to launch the Psyche mission in the fall to explore a very unusual asteroid of the same name, which is estimated to contain ten million trillion dollars worth of minerals.

The $1.6 billion Psyche mission is the first mission to examine a metallic object in the asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

It was originally scheduled to take off last summer, but the launch was delayed due to problems with the flight program, which would keep the craft pointing in the right direction and keep its antenna pointed at the ground.

NASA said this week that the independent panel that reviewed the plan estimated that the mission would be ready for launch in October.

Asteroid 16 Psyche, with a diameter of about 226 km, is one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt.

Observations using ground-based telescopes and interplanetary radar have revealed that, unlike most other asteroids composed of rock and ice, Saeki is composed almost entirely of metals – iron, nickel and possibly smaller amounts of gold and cobalt.

It is estimated that the iron it contains is enough to satisfy every need on Earth for several million years.

The most likely explanation for the asteroid’s unusual composition is that it is the core of a medium-sized planet that was destroyed in violent collisions in the early stages of the solar system’s evolution.

In large bodies such as planets, the heavy metals gradually sink into the center, leaving the lighter rocks at the surface. At the center of the Earth, for example, is an iron-nickel core about the size of Mars.

Due to its large size, the asteroid Psyche is on the list of candidate worlds for future space mines.

Of course, NASA did not plan the mission for financial gain: the study of the iron asteroid is expected to provide clues to the evolution of the solar system and the formation of rocky planets like Earth.