NASA is heading to a distant asteroid – with a hefty price tag.
The space rock, called 16 Psyche, is said to be filled with so many precious metals it would be worth a whopping $10,000,000,000,000,000,000 – ten quintillion dollars – here on Earth, the Daily Star previously reported. But while the staggering sum would be enough to make everybody in the world a billionaire, the organisation isn't planning on harvesting the rock for cash. Instead, they are hoping to study it to better understand how planets form.
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy spacecraft took off on Friday (October 13) and is now hurtling through the solar system on a path for the rock, which sits on the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. NASA announced plans over the summer to set off to 16 Psyche and are now "working around the clock" to make sure the mission is a success.
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Back in July, they said in a press release: "With less than 100 days to go before its launch, teams of engineers and technicians are working almost around the clock to ensure the orbiter is ready to journey 2.5 billion miles to a metal-rich asteroid that may tell us more about planetary cores and how planets form."
The rocket, which launched from the Kennedy Space Centre Launch Complex 39A in Florida, US, will now travel 2.2 billion miles (3.5 billion km) through the atmosphere to the asteroid. The spacecraft was initially set to launch last year but the mission was pushed back due to software issues.
And while it's full steam ahead for the shuttle, it isn't expected to reach its final destination until July 2029 as the asteroid is so far away. The ship is expected to get a velocity boost when it passes Mars in May 2026.
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16 Psyche is the largest of nine metal-rich asteroids in our solar system. Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA's science mission directorate, told Space.com: "Psyche is by far the largest, and that's why we want to go to it because the smaller ones are more likely to have been changed by things impacting them, whereas the big one, we think, is going to be completely unchanged."
The asteroid measures about 280km across and is 232km long. It has a surface area of 165,800 square km – about two-thirds the surface area of the UK.
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