NASA has confirmed the date of its mission to an asteroid that could make everyone on Earth a billionaire.
The goal of the Psyche mission is to learn more about the 140-mile-wide asteroid Psyche, which circles the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.
This may sound like the plot of a big-budget Hollywood movie, but it’s really happening.
And to make things even more exciting, scientists think the asteroid is full of gold.
Find out more about a NASA spacecraft that was sent into space to avoid an asteroid in the video below.
The mission was supposed to start in August 2022, but NASA missed its launch window because of technical and software issues.
But the day may come when everyone’s dream of becoming a billionaire comes true.
The Psyche mission will be launched on October 1, 2023, NASA has confirmed.
A source says that the asteroid could have a core made of iron, nickel, and gold that is worth $10,000,000,000,000,000,000, or $10,000 quadrillion.
The Falcon Heavy Rocketship from SpaceX will be the rocket used for this mission.
Due to the new launch date, the Psyche spacecraft won’t reach the asteroid until August 2029 instead of 2026. This means we’ll have to wait a little longer to find out if we’re all going to be super rich.
The mission will be part of NASA’s Discovery Program, which is a low-cost way to explore space with robots.
Most asteroids are made of rocks or ice, but Psyche is thought to be the heart of a dead planet that has been exposed.
Researchers hope that the study will help us learn more about the Earth’s core and help us understand it better.
NASA says that this asteroid is different from others because it seems to be “the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet,” which is one of the “building blocks” of our solar system.
It explains:
Deep within rocky, terrestrial planets – including Earth – scientists infer the presence of metallic cores, but these lie unreachably far below the planets’ rocky mantles and crusts.
Because we cannot see or measure Earth’s core directly, Psyche offers a unique window into the violent history of collisions and accretion that created terrestrial planets.
Arizona State University is in charge of the mission, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) is in charge of mission management, operations, and navigation.
NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications tech demo is also part of the mission. It will test high-speed laser “space broadband.”
The asteroid was first found in March 1852 by the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis. It was named after the Greek god of the soul.
It is about the size of the US state of Massachusetts, and it is about 140 miles across on average.
Psyche is in orbit around Mars and Jupiter. At the farthest point of that orbit, it is 309 million miles from the sun.
