NASA embarks on an exciting mission: the asteroid Psyche is believed to be a planetary core that has lost its rocky mantle and is composed mostly of metals.
Due to unfavorable weather conditions, the launch scheduled for today, October 12, has been postponed, and the new launch date is October 13, 2023 at 16:19 Hungarian time.
the NASA’s latest mission has at the same time aroused great interest on a very large scale It aims to map and study the asteroid Psyche, located between Mars and Jupiter, about 300-600 million kilometers from Earth. The asteroid’s material is the researchers’ assumptions and what has been accomplished so far Thermal emission tests They may contain significant amounts of metals: even iron, nickel, gold and platinum. Psyche is roughly the size of Massachusetts.
From a scientific standpoint, the exploitation opportunities provided by the asteroid are of great importance. With its help, we can obtain important information about the evolution and early history of the solar system, and we can learn more about the internal structure of rocky planets: according to the most likely scenario, Psyche is actually the inner core of once-existing planets. An ancient planet, it has largely lost its outer crust over time, as a result of violent collisions with other celestial bodies. We can also collect new knowledge regarding the Earth, because we still do not have detailed data about the core of our planet due to physical conditions: these layers are very limited or not accessible at all by man-made tools.
We can follow the mission directly from Kennedy Space Center On NASA channel. The spacecraft is expected to reach the asteroid in August 2029.
In the gallery below, we’ve collected illustrations of the Psyche asteroid and images of the Psyche spacecraft of the same name.
Show 7 photos
