16 Psyche is only 140 miles in diameter, but that is a massive amount of expensive ores. It is one of the biggest objects in the asteroid belts that are orbiting between Jupiter and Mars.
Dr. Tracy Becker, a planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute, explained, “We’ve seen meteorites that are mostly metal, but Psyche could be unique, in that it might be an asteroid that is totally made of iron and nickel.”
The Psyche mission plan
The Psyche mission is set to launch in August 2022 and will arrive at the asteroid orbit in early 2026. The mission’s main objective is “to determine whether Psyche 16 is indeed the core of a planet-sized object,” It “will be the first mission to investigate a world of metal rather than of rock and ice.”
The Psyche spaceship will try to merge into the asteroid’s orbit for 21 months. The unmanned flight will map and study everything about 16 Psyche, then send all its findings home to earth.
The mission will use a multispectral imager, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, a magnetometer, and a radio instrument (for gravity measurement).
