NASA is sending a probe to Psyche, and it will be the first time humanity has explored a metallic asteroid. The probe has to travel 3.5 billion kilometers and should reach Psyche in 2029, studying it for another two years and two months. NASA’s probe will approach the asteroid within 75 km and try to answer many questions about the super-special type of celestial body.

17:16 Refueling was successfully completed.

17:00 Continue fueling the Falcon Heavy rocket. The weather is much better than Thursday and there is an 85% chance that the launch will be on time.

Psyche – Calendar of a mission to a metallic asteroid

The launch is scheduled for 5:19 p.m. on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Complex 39A of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida (10:19 a.m. local time).

62 minutes after launch, the Psyche probe will detach from the rocket and continue its six-year journey on its own, planning to reach Psyche in the summer of 2029 with the help of a gravitational boost from the planet Mars. 2026 year.

The mission will last until autumn 2031. The asteroid lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, in a vast region called the asteroid belt. Eight minutes after launch, the rocket’s two boosters must return to the Space Force Station at Cape Canaveral for reuse on other missions.

The probe will study the asteroid for 26 months, but will NOT land on it or attempt to collect samples. The asteroid will be analyzed by the space probe using radio waves, gamma rays, spectrometers and multispectral imaging instruments.

Psyche can be mostly metal, but can also contain voids or be a mixture of stone and metal. It is precisely because we do not know what to expect that the mission becomes even more valuable and exciting.

In 2017, NASA gave the go-ahead for the mission, which cost more than one billion dollars, and there were delays, as it was hoped that a launch would be possible in the fall of 2022, but during the tests there were software problems and errors.

Then the date was set for October 5, but due to some technical problems, they decided to try again on October 12, but the weather on Thursday was no better.

The currently launched space probe is also Psyche, and the main part where the instruments are located is about the size of a minibus. With elongated solar panels, it approaches the size of a tennis court (25 meters long and 7 meters wide).

Why is Psyche so special?

A very large asteroid was chosen because it is likely to have remained unchanged for billions of years, while smaller asteroids were the result of collisions. Psyche is over 280 km in diameter, while Bennu was much less than a kilometer in diameter.

The psyche was formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago, during the birth of our solar system. Perhaps volcanic eruptions took place on it, as evidence that traces of ancient lava flows could remain on the surface. Then, as Psyche cooled, its contraction could cause giant cracks to form. The probe will have something to analyze in 26 months at an altitude of 75 to 750 km from the surface of Psyche.

16 Psyche is the full name of this asteroid, which has caused a lot of buzz since Lindy Elkins-Tanton, NASA’s Psyche mission manager, tried to give an idea of ​​just how special this asteroid is in 2017. 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). At the 2023 conference, Lindy Elkins-Tanton explained that the advance was just “a fun intellectual exercise.” No one could ever bring this asteroid to Earth.

From the light reflected from its surface, scientists know that Psyche is very dense and composed of metal, but probably also of other materials, such as rocks.

To get around, the probe will also use Hall effect engines, a first for interplanetary travel. These engines use electricity provided by the probe’s solar panels to produce noble gas ions (xenon), which are then accelerated by passing through an electric field. They are then ejected at a very high speed, five times faster than the fuel ejected from a conventional rocket. This is how the necessary impulse is produced.

16 Psyche is one of the largest asteroids in the asteroid belt and may be the exposed core of an ancient planet. Astronomers started from a well-known scenario: at the beginning of the solar system, a little more than 4.5 billion years ago, protoplanets formed as a result of the agglomeration of smaller bodies.

The interior of these planets was so warm that the heavier metals descended to the center, surrounded by a less dense mantle of silicates. This process, called “differentiation,” occurred on all telluric planets in the Solar System, including Earth.

NASA wants to find out how old this asteroid is, what is on its surface, and what it can tell us about the composition of Earth’s metallic core, where we cannot reach.

Psyche is so large that it has its own gravitational force, and based on the disturbances it causes, the approximate mass of the asteroid can also be determined. One that is 1% of the mass of the entire asteroid belt.

16 Psyche is thought to be most likely composed of iron and nickel, unlike most asteroids, which are made of ice and stony material. Researchers hope that 16 Psyche will provide clues about the early history of the Solar System’s planets because of its similarity to the solid part of Earth’s core.

Psyche probably experienced some very violent collisions in its history, something common for the times when the solar system was forming.

Psyche was the 16th asteroid to be discovered, the first to notice it was an Italian astronomer named Annibale de Gasparis, who in 1852 named it after the Greek goddess of the soul (Psyche).