The countdown is on for the launch of Nasa’s Psyche spacecraft, bound for an asteroid worth more than you can possibly imagine.
Or maybe you can, if you have an idea of what $10,000 quadrillion, or £7,700 quadrillion, would buy – but given that’s more than the entire global economy by quite a bit, it might be a struggle. Combined GDP is currently a comparatively measly $105 trillion.
That’s pocket change for the asteroid which, scientists hope, has a core of iron, nickel and gold – making it a literal flying gold mine.
Named 16 Psyche, it was discovered in 1852 by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis – becoming the 16th known asteroid in the solar system. The astronomer named it after Psyche, the Greek goddess of the soul.
Now, around 170 years later, Nasa is sending a spacecraft to study the rock as it orbits the Sun along the asteroid belt, a stellar highway between Mars and Jupiter.
On Thursday, October 12, the Psyche craft will be launched into space atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida – broadcast on YouTube as it happens.
From here, it will take six years to reach its destination more than 235 million miles away.
Psyche takes five Earth years to complete one orbit of the Sun, but only four hours to rotate once on its own axis, a Psyche ‘day’.
In Nasa’s own words, the asteroid has an ‘irregular, potato-like shape’, and measures 173 miles by 144 miles. Those massive dimensions make it so big, it is technically classed as one of the solar system’s minor planets. In fact, it is thought to contain about 1% of the entire mass of the asteroid belt.
One of Nasa’s aims is to determine whether it may have been the core of a planetesimal, part of an early planet, helping scientists better understand the formation of Earth.
‘We know a good deal about Earth’s core, but we can’t study it directly because of its depth below the crust and mantle,’ said Brad Zavodsky, Psyche mission manager.
‘Investigating Psyche is perhaps the closest we can come. Studying its composition and structure is an exciting opportunity to learn more about such objects in space – and perhaps a little something about our own planet as well.’
Psyche is also an M-type asteroid, because of the high volume of metal it is predicted to contain.
But Nasa isn’t planning on bringing any of that precious metal home – nor is anyone else, yet.
The cost and logistics of mining asteroids mean the process is some way off, but many believe it will become a reality one day.
If – or when – it does, the next gold rush will be very different from the last.
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