- NASA is launching a mission to study an asteroid worth more than an estimated $10,000 quadrillion and contains enough precious metal to make everyone on Earth a billionaire.
- The asteroid Psyche 16 will be the primary focus of NASA’s project, which is targeted to launch in August 2022 and would arrive four years later in early 2026.
- “Unlike most other asteroids that are rocky or icy bodies, scientists think the M-type (metallic) asteroid 16 Psyche is comprised mostly of metallic iron and nickel similar to Earth,” NASA explained.
Becca Monaghan from Indy100 writes:
“NASA is launching a mission to study a nearby asteroid worth more than $10,000 quadrillion – which is said to contain so much precious metal that everyone on Earth would be a billionaire if returned.
After discovering Psyche 16 in March 1852, the 124 mile-wide space rock will be the primary focus of NASA’s project, which is targeted to launch in August 2022. The spacecraft would arrive four years later in early 2026.
It will be the first exploration into a world of metal rather than rock and ice. NASA said, “Unlike most other asteroids that are rocky or icy bodies, scientists think the M-type (metallic) asteroid 16 Psyche is comprised mostly of metallic iron and nickel similar to Earth.”
The asteroid is nestled between Mars and Jupiter. According to the Daily Mail, it is believed to be the “remnants of a protoplanet destroyed by ‘hit-and-run collisions’ when the solar system formed.”
A team in California has since created a new temperature map to help NASA understand the asteroid’s surface properties. Usually, infrared images of a space rock only provide a fragment of data equivalent to a single pixel, but researchers could get 50-pixel resolution, according to the Daily Mail…”
See full story here.
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