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NASA Will Reach Unique Metal Asteroid Worth $10,000 Quadrillion Four Years Early

This article is more than 6 years old.

NASA has fast-tracked the Psyche mission to visit a one-of-a-kind asteroid worth $10,000 quadrillion.

Unlike most asteroids that are either icy or rocky, 16 Psyche is composed almost entirely of metallic iron and nickel, similar to the core of the Earth. If anyone could mine that asteroid, the resulting riches would collapse the paltry Earth economy of around $74 trillion.

“It’s such a strange object,” said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the lead scientist on the NASA mission and the director of Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, in a January interview with Canada’s Global News.

“Even if we could grab a big metal piece and drag it back here … what would you do? Could you kind of sit on it and hide it and control the global resource — kind of like diamonds are controlled corporately — and protect your market? What if you decided you were going to bring it back and you were just going to solve the metal resource problems of humankind for all time? (This is wild speculation obviously.)”

SSL/ASU/P. Rubin/NASA/JPL-Caltech

For the scientists, 16 Psyche is alluring because it may in fact be a planetary core that has been stripped of its rocky outer layers by a series of violent collisions in its past.

“16 Psyche is the only known object of its kind in the Solar System, and this is the only way humans will ever visit a core. We learn about inner space by visiting outer space," said Elkins-Tanton in a statement announcing the mission back in January.

The mission was originally scheduled to start in 2023, but the Psyche team has come up with a plan to launch in the summer of 2022 and arrive at the main belt asteroid in 2026 – a whopping four years early.

“We challenged the mission design team to explore if an earlier launch date could provide a more efficient trajectory to the asteroid Psyche, and they came through in a big way,” said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a statement. “This will enable us to fulfill our science objectives sooner and at a reduced cost.”

The team has plotted a new trajectory that is much more efficient, eliminating the need for an Earth gravity assist and using a Mars gravity assist instead. The new path also takes the spacecraft farther from the Sun, reducing the amount of heat protection, and therefore the weight, of the probe.

"The biggest advantage is the excellent trajectory, which gets us there about twice as fast and is more cost effective," said Elkins-Tanton.

"We are all extremely excited that NASA was able to accommodate this earlier launch date. The world will see this amazing metal world so much sooner."

The craft itself, which is being built by Space Systems Loral (SSL) in California, is also getting an upgrade. SSL has redesigned the solar array from a four-panel array in a straight row on either side to a more powerful five-panel x-shaped design. Its relatively small body and the high-power supplied by the beefed up solar array will speed Psyche to the asteroid belt at a much faster pace than is typical.

Once Psyche reaches its goal, scientists hope to discover if this is indeed the core of an early planet, how old it is, how similar it is to Earth’s core and what its surface is like.

If it’s not a planetary core, there are very few other explanations for such a metal-rich asteroid.

“Short of it being the Death Star… one other possibility is that it’s material that formed very near the Sun early in the Solar System,” Elkins-Tanton said.

“I figure we’re either going to go see something that’s really improbable and unique, or something that is completely astonishing.”

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