NASA sends Psyche spacecraft on a six-year journey towards a rare metal-covered asteroid

NASA has launched its first one-of-a-kind mission where a spacecraft ‘Psyche’ has been sent on a six-year journey towards a rare metal-covered asteroid with the same name. This is to find out whether the asteroid is the exposed core of an early planetary building block from the beginning of the solar system.

The Psyche mission was launched at 10:19 a.m. ET on Friday, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mission has been named after the 16 Psyche asteroid it will observe. The spacecraft will travel about 2.2 billion miles over the next six years to reach the asteroid, located in the outer part of the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiters, said David Oh, Psyche chief engineer for operations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

It is one of many upcoming NASA missions to launch aboard the Falcon Heavy rocket.

“We’re launching a mission to an object that humankind has never before studied up close. This will be our first time visiting a world that has a metal surface. There aren’t that many completely unexplored types of worlds in our solar system for us to go see, so that is what is so exciting about this,” said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche principal investigator and foundation.

Scientists are of belief that the asteroid may resemble the cores of rocky planets in our solar system, such as Earth, Mars, Mercury and Venus.

It may have been exposed due to violent collisions with other bodies while the solar system was in formation.

Ground and space-based telescopes have helped them develop a model of the astroid's shape which is about the size of Massachusetts without Cape Cod and with the surface area equivalent to California.

Social Media Reaction

Tesla CEO, Elon Musk took to X (Formerly Twitter) to congratulate the research centre.

Additionally, Space X shared a view from the second stage before the escape burn and deployment of the spacecraft.

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