NASA’s Psyche mission is on its way to a heavy-metal asteroid of the same name—a type of object that scientists have never seen up close before
Deep in the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter, lies a strange, metal-rich asteroid unlike anything anyone has ever seen before. Dubbed Psyche, the unique object may offer investigators a truly alien landscape to explore—one that could yield new insights about the origin of our solar system and perhaps even about Earth’s most remote region: our planet’s enigmatic, unreachable core.
During the following hour or two, the spacecraft will deploy its two cross-shaped solar-power arrays, orient itself with regards to the sun and establish contact with mission controllers on Earth. These steps mark the start of a 100-day initial checkout period to establish Psyche’s tenure in space. But to the mission team’s relief, Psyche now begins a six-year cruise through the solar system out to the asteroid belt, giving the team plenty of time to test the spacecraft instruments and fine-tune the plan for on-site operations. During the first two years of its flight, Psyche will also host the Deep Space Optical Communications experiment, a separate project testing laser communication technology in deep space.
What scientists lack in knowledge about Psyche, they make up for with a host of hypotheses. Of those, mission personnel admit that their favorite is the notion that Psyche formed as the metallic heart of a miniature planetlike body and then lost much of its rocky outer layers to a truly world-shattering collision.
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Watch SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launch NASA's Psyche asteroid mission todayMichael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, 'Out There,' was published on Nov. 13, 2018.
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