This illustration depicts NASA's Psyche spacecraft. Set to launch in on October 12, the Psyche mission will explore a metal-rich asteroid of the same name that lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists think Psyche may be the core of a planetesimal, one of the building blocks of the terrestrial (rocky) planets in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.
The Psyche mission — named after the asteroid it's planning to study — is set to blast off this week from Cape Canaveral, Fla., where it will begin a six-year journey to its home in the asteroid belt.This illustration depicts NASA's Psyche spacecraft. Set to launch Oct. 12, the Psyche mission will explore a metal-rich asteroid of the same name that lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
To date, astronomers have only been able to get information about the asteroid, offically named 16 Psyche, from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the now-retired airborne "Because we cannot go to the cores of any of our rocky planets — way too hot, way too much pressure — but they make these magnetic fields that keep our atmosphere safe and give us guidance and have a really important aspect of habitability."There are two leading theories as to how Psyche formed. One, is that it was in the stage of potentially forming as a planet, called a planetesimal, but another body slammed into it, stripping away its upper crust leaving behind a metal core.
"There's really nothing that beats actually sending a spacecraft to the object. And I think every single time that we've gone to a new world, there's something that completely subverts our expectations, and you learn something tremendously valuable about the solar system."But, she noted while speaking with CBC, there are some caveats.
"I do think that we could have people mining in the asteroid belt," Elkins-Tanton said. "In a lot of weird ways that is a plausible future."