NASA is preparing to launch a mission on Friday to the distant asteroid Psyche, a never-before-explored metal world that scientists believe may be the core of an ancient celestial body, AFP reports.

The Psyche probe is scheduled to launch at 10:19 a.m. local time (2:19 p.m. GMT) from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

However, capricious weather is forecast, the probability of favorable weather for take-off is only 40%. A new launch option is scheduled for Saturday, should it be needed.

Humanity has already visited worlds made of stone, ice or gas. But “this will be the first time we visit a world with a metallic surface,” Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the mission’s principal investigator, said at a news conference.

The journey will be long: Psyche is located in the outer part of the asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. To reach it, the NASA probe will have to overcome about 3.5 million kilometers, and the arrival date is planned for the summer of 2029.

Thanks to the light reflected from its surface, scientists know that Psyche is very dense and consists of metal and other materials.

Scientists believe that Psyche, the length of which exceeds 200 kilometers, could be the core of an ancient celestial body, the surface of which was torn by the fall of an asteroid.

Earth, like Mars, Venus and Mercury, has a metallic core. But “we’ll never be able to see those cores, they’re too hot, too deep,” said researcher Lindy Elkins-Tanton.

Therefore, a mission to Psyche is “our only way to see the core.”

Precious, but too far away to…deal with

“16 Psyche” is the name of this asteroid, which caused a lot of buzz after Lindy Elkins-Tanton, NASA’s Psyche mission manager, tried in 2017 to give an idea of ​​how special this asteroid is. She calculated that the nickel alone on a giant metal asteroid could be worth 10 quintillion dollars, and this number is very large, and to give you an idea of ​​how much it is, it says here: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 (dollars).

We would all become dollar millionaires if this amount were divided among the entire population of the Earth. However, we have no way of moving this asteroid hundreds of millions of kilometers away, but we will send a probe that will stay near it for about two years and take lots of pictures and measurements.

The asteroid will be analyzed by the space probe using radio waves, gamma rays, spectrometers and multispectral imaging devices.

• Read also: Psyche, a metallic asteroid that would be worth a fantastic sum if we could bring it to Earth