Scientists are preparing to launch a new spacecraft to explore a distant celestial body next week.
NASA is readying its Psyche spacecraft, which will begin its journey to an asteroid with the same name on October 12. Scientists expect the craft will arrive at the rocky object by late 2029. It will be the first spacecraft to visit an asteroid believed to be comprised of mostly metal.
Psyche is a large, “potato-like” asteroid with a surface area of 64,000 square miles, according to NASA. It was discovered by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis in 1852 and occupies a space in the outer portion of the asteroid belt, whipping around between 186 million miles and 372 million miles away from Earth.
Scientists believe the asteroid’s metal could be from the core of a planetesimal — “one of the building blocks of our solar system.” NASA characterized the upcoming mission as a “journey to the center of the Earth.”
“If it is a planetesimal, asteroid Psyche may offer a close look at the interior of terrestrial planets like Earth. We can’t bore a path to Earth’s metal core — or the cores of the other rocky planets — so visiting Psyche could provide a one-of-a-kind window into the violent history of collisions and accumulation of matter that created planets like our own,” said NASA.
NASA plans to launch the Psyche spacecraft from the Kennedy Space Center using a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The Psyche spacecraft contains a number of instruments that will be used to observe the composition of the asteroid, including a “magnetometer, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, and a multispectral imager.”
The craft will get a gravity assist from Mars in 2026 before arriving at its destination roughly three years later.
“If all goes as planned, asteroid Psyche’s gravity will capture the spacecraft in late July 2029, and Psyche will begin its prime mission in August,” said NASA. “It will spend about two years orbiting the asteroid to take pictures, map the surface, and collect data to determine Psyche’s composition.”
NASA achieved another recent milestone in the realm of asteroid exploration. The space agency collected the largest-ever sample of an asteroid from a distant object known as Bennu on September 24, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
