In the swirling ring of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, one space rock has attracted far more attention than any other.The metal-rich asteroid has made headlines because scientists once estimated, if mined, it could be worth way more than all the cash on Earth today.
Building on years of Earth-based observations, scientists hope to reveal exactly what 16 Psyche is: The remnant core of a failed planet? A tiny planet that was crashed into and reassembled? Or a cosmic body shaped by something more exotic, like iron-spewing volcanoes?, the official name of the asteroid that was discovered in 1852 by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis. It's named after the goddess of the soul in Greek mythology.
The mission was originally scheduled to launch in September 2022 and arrive at Psyche in 2026. However, mission development and workforce issues forced NASA to postpone and re-evaluate the timeline.given the green light to continue but the delay means the spacecraft is now expected to reach 16 Psyche in 2029.
"We know its size, shape, rotation period, and rotation pole to a pretty high degree — within 5 per cent or so." "We use the metals that have been observed in iron meteorites as examples for what metal Psyche might be made of," said Fiona Nichols-Fleming, a PhD candidate at Brown University in the US studying 16 Psyche.
If it is a remnant core, the Psyche spacecraft will find out. It carries a magnetometer, hoping to sense any remnant magnetism the asteroid might exhibit. That number is highly speculative, as Professor Elkins-Tanton noted in a 2017 interview, and the bigger problem is we'd have to find a way to mine its minerals.