The POT He has launched a probe on an exciting mission to Psyche, an asteroid made up mostly of metal. This space trip will take the probe to travel around 3.5 billion kilometers, from the Kennedy Space Center to the Main Asteroid Belt, located between Mars and Jupiter.
It is expected that reach its destination in 2029 and reveal the true nature of this enigmatic celestial body, according to the report of Wired.
The Psyche mission, under the direction of Lindy Elkins-Tanton, principal investigator, aims to “explore outer space to study inner space.”
Psyche is a 226 kilometer wide asteroid that is home to at least 12 trillion kilograms of metals, including iron, nickel and gold. It is the first known space object composed primarily of metal, which has led scientists to theorize that it could be the core of a failed or destroyed planet.
A unique asteroid
There are few structures with proportions and compositions similar to Psyche, such as the cores of the Earth, Moon, Mars and Mercury. Although geologists have investigated the center of the Earth for decades, they have never had direct contact. Arrival on Psyche will possibly mark the first time humans come face to face with a planetary core.
If this hypothesis turns out to be true, the probe will have a unique opportunity to study the process of planet formation and evolution. If, on the other hand, the results indicate that Psyche is not an exposed nucleus, then it will be a never-before-seen solar system object, which is equally exciting for the scientific community.
The probe is equipped with a magnetometer to search for evidence of ancient magnetic fields on the asteroid. It also has a neutron and gamma ray spectrometer that will help verify the chemical composition of the space body. Additionally, a multispectral imager will provide information on its mineral composition.
NASA has anticipated that approximately two months after launch, the mission will share its first images, while the team performs an initial verification of the probe and its scientific instruments. Once the imager is confirmed to be working as expected, raw images will be published directly from the spacecraft to a web page.