The American National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Psyche mission took off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral on Friday. The goal of the mission is to explore the distant, metal-rich planet of the same name, which orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket with a probe on board lifted off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39A on schedule at 4:19 p.m. CEST. NASA had to postpone the launch date several times due to bad weather.
The van-sized Psyche probe is expected to reach its destination at the outer edge of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter in late July 2029.
The research spacecraft will then begin its main mission in August. It will remain in orbit of the asteroid for approximately two years, during which it will take pictures, map the surface and collect data from which scientists will then determine the exact composition of the asteroid.
NASA calls Psyche one of the most interesting objects in the main asteroid belt. It has an irregular shape resembling a potato, and if it were cut in half horizontally, the resulting oval shape would measure up to 280 kilometers wide and 232 kilometers high. Its area corresponds to 165,800 square kilometers. The mission will be the first for the US space agency to focus on an asteroid containing more metal than rock or ice.
Until recently, scientists thought the asteroid was mostly metal, but new data suggests it is likely a mixture of metal and silicates, with metal making up 30 to 60 percent of its volume, according to NASA. Reuters writes that it is mostly iron, nickel and gold, the combined value of which corresponds to ten trillion dollars.
However, experts point out that the mission’s goals are unrelated to the potential of space mining. According to NASA, the Psyche mission is to gain knowledge about the formation of the Earth and other planets whose cores are made of molten metal. One of the main hypotheses about the origin of Psyche assumes that it is the frozen core of a planet that was destroyed by a collision with another space body in the early days of the Solar System.
2023-10-13 15:05:05
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