NASA’s Psyche spacecraft launches, beginning a first-of-its-kind mission

In a landmark event, NASA has launched an uncrewed spacecraft to explore a metal-rich asteroid – the first planetary body of its kind to get a visit from a human-made probe.

The Psyche mission, named after the asteroid 16 Psyche that the spacecraft will explore, was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., at 10:19 a.m. Friday. It will travel more than 2 billion miles on a spiraling path to reach the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and rendezvous with 16 Psyche.

The asteroid Psyche was discovered by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis in 1852 and was named for the Greek goddess of the soul.

Based on observations made from Earth, scientists think 30 to 60 percent of the asteroid’s volume is an exposed nickel-iron core. It is believed to be the remnant core of an ancient planetary body that existed during the initial formation of our solar system, and it could be similar to the mostly mysterious core of our own planet.

“This is really an amazing opportunity that the solar system has presented to us to go and learn about this sort of fundamental building block of a planet that we can’t investigate any other way,” said Sarah Noble, a NASA program scientist.

The spacecraft will take about six years to reach the asteroid, and it will orbit the space rock for 26 months. The total cost of the mission, minus the cost of launching it, is estimated to be $850 million.

Lindy T. Elkins-Tanton, the principal investigator for the Psyche mission and a professor at Arizona State University, said this exploration will help scientists understand how planets are made, particularly our habitable Earth.

“Think of … Earth as (a) cake that results from planet formation, so all of the ingredients have been mixed and heated and made into this multi-layer planet that we’ve got, but we’ve never met one of the main ingredients, which is the metal for the core,” Elkins-Tanton said.

Many terrestrial planets share similar qualities with Earth, including metallic cores. But Earth’s core is approximately 1,800 miles below the surface, which puts it at currently insurmountable depths and pressures to physically study with drills and scientific instruments.

That means the Psyche asteroid offers scientists a rare opportunity to delve into a planet’s center without the need to tunnel to its core – a feat deemed exceedingly rare by experts in the field.

“The Earth’s core is hotter than the sun’s surface … so it’s far harder to go there,” said Benjamin Weiss, who is on the team for the Psyche mission and a professor of planetary sciences at MIT. “And even if you could send a probe down, there would be issues with how you communicate with it, [so] in our lifetime, almost certainly, we’re not going to be sending any mission to the Earth’s core.”

Weiss also said this mission will help scientists understand iron asteroids a lot better, because they know so little about them from studying them from afar or via the few pieces of iron meteorites that have fallen to Earth.

The highly anticipated mission was the 14th selected as part of NASA’s Discovery program, which funds scientific exploration in the solar system. Elkins-Tanton hopes that this mission could help humans obtain resources from space that could prolong the longevity and health of Earth’s natural resources.

“Space exploration is a narrative of a positive future where teams of thousands of people can do amazing things together,” said Elkins-Tanton. “Our Earth is fragile, as we’ve been learning increasingly, [and] extracting resources is extremely damaging, so wouldn’t it be great if we could get some of these resources from space instead?”