It has been just over a year since Nasa sent a spacecraft after a $10,000,000,000,000,000,000 asteroid. That’s 10 quintillion, we think. It’s hard to count the zeros.
It’s a mission years in the making, and something that will take at least another five years to start receiving data from. But it’s thought that the asteroid known as 16 Psyche, or just Psyche, could help us discover more about the Earth, even if it’s quite far away.
The literal flying gold mine was discovered in 1852 by Italian astronomer Annibale De Gasparis, becoming the 16th known asteroid in the solar system. And like many things in the solar system, it has been named after a goddess – Psyche, who is the Greek goddess of the soul.
So what exactly does the American space agency want with the space rock?
What is 16 Psyche?
In short, Psyche is an asteroid. But Nasa calls it one of the most intriguing objects in the main asteroid belt – the slip of asteroids in between the planets Mars and Jupiter.
The asteroid has been classified as a M type (metallic) asteroid, with metal making up to 60% of its composition.
Psyche has an irregular potato-like shape, and if it was sliced in half it would resemble something of a squashed oval. In total, the asteroid measures 173 miles across at its widest point, and is around 144 miles long, giving it a surface area of 64,000 square miles.
So it’s big. In fact, it’s so big that Psyche contains around 1% of the total mass of the entire asteroid belt, and is thought to be the biggest M type asteroid found so far.
Why is 16 Psyche so valuable?
Not only is Psyche big, but it is thought to also be made mostly of metal with a core of iron, nickel and gold, as well as rare elements essential to cars and electronics like platinum and palladium.
From the rare metals thought to be in the centre, the asteroid has been estimated to be worth $10,000,000,000,000,000,000. That’s far, far, far more than all the money on our planet.
However, this will be confirmed when the spacecraft reaches the asteroid, and it doesn’t seem like the space agency has any plans of bringing any of that precious metal home.
So not only does it have a literal gold mine in its centre, but researchers think that the asteroid may have significant amounts of metal from the core of a planetesimal – part of an early planet – which is one of the building blocks of our solar system.
This means it could hold untold secrets about how the solar system formed, and reveal more information about our planet, Earth.
What you need to know about the asteroid belt
It’s thought that there are between 1.1 and 1.9 million asteroids larger than 1 kilometre (0.6 miles) in diameter, and millions of other smaller ones, floating around the asteroid belt.
Other stars also contain signs of asteroid belts, suggesting that may be common across solar systems.
The largest body in the belt is Ceres, which is around 600 miles across, but Ceres is known as a dwarf planet – much like Pluto.
The belt orbits the Sun in a doughnut shape known as a torus, in between the planets Mars and Jupiter.
Obviously we can’t dig our way to the centre of the Earth, so Nasa said that 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.
Nicola Fox, Nasa associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, said: ‘I am excited to see the treasure trove of science Psyche will unlock as Nasa’s first mission to a metal world.
‘By studying asteroid Psyche, we hope to better understand our universe and our place in it, especially regarding the mysterious and impossible-to-reach metal core of our own home planet, Earth.’
Nasa also notes the asteroid could be something else. It said it could be the leftover piece of a completely different kind of iron-rich body that formed from metal-rich material somewhere in the solar system.
But we won’t know unless we visit.
What is the Psyche Mission?
This is Nasa’s first attempt to study an asteroid that has more metal than rock and ice. The mission launched with the same named spacecraft – the Psyche spacecraft – on October 13, 2023, from the Kennedy Space centre.
Cruising through space, the Psyche is now on its way to the metallic rock.
The asteroid orbits the Sun in the outer part of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is around three times farther from the Sun than Earth.
The distance from Earth to Psyche varies from less than 186 million miles to more than 372 million miles, so its thought that the spacecraft will take six years to reach its destination.
It’s hoped that asteroid Psyche’s gravity will capture the spacecraft in late July 2029, and the craft will begin its prime mission in August.
The craft will spend about two years orbiting the asteroid to take pictures, map the surface, and collect data to determine Psyche’s composition.
Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche principal investigator, said: ‘We said ‘goodbye’ to our spacecraft, the centre of so many work lives for so many years – thousands of people and a decade.
‘But it’s really not a finish line; it’s a starting line for the next marathon. Our spacecraft is off to meet our asteroid, and we’ll fill another gap in our knowledge – and colour in another kind of world in our solar system.’
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