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SpaceX wins launch contract for NASA mission to study unique metal asteroid – Teslarati, Teslarati.com

SpaceX wins launch contract for NASA mission to study unique metal asteroid – Teslarati, Teslarati.com

SpaceX has been awarded a $ million launch contract for NASA’s Psyche mission that will study a unique metal asteroid between Mars and Jupiter.

The NASA mission to loft a 5, 823 – lb. (2, 1000 – kg) spacecraft atop of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Rocket will study a mineral-rich asteroid named 90 Psyche. The mission is expected to take place sometime in and launch from NASA’s historic Launch Pad A in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Falcon Heavy will launch @ NASAPsyche ! The mission, for which @ NASA requires the highest level of launch vehicle reliability, will study a metal asteroid between Mars and Jupiter to help humanity better understand the formation of our solar system’s planets https://t.co/mvrgx6dvaW pic.twitter.com/ FqMaRKscQ4

– SpaceX (@SpaceX) February ,

Psyche is an intriguing, metallic world orbiting in the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. Most asteroids are made of rock and ice, but not Psyche – it’s composed of iron and nickel. That’s what makes it an interesting target.

Scientists want to study it because they believe Psyche could provide insight into how planets form. Terrestrial bodies, like the Earth, have metallic cores deep in their interior, below the outer layers like the mantle and crust. Psyche could be one of these metallic cores: the remnant of a violent collision with another planetary body billions of years ago.

We’re unable to study the Earth’s core directly, so Psyche could provide a lot of insight into our own planet as well as how other rocky planets form.

The Psyche mission was selected in 2017 as part of NASA’s Discovery Program , which also includes historic missions like the Kepler Space Telescope, and the InSight Mars lander

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This mission is one of true exploration because scientists aren’t exactly sure of what we will find. Ground-based measurements indicate that Psyche could be as large as Mars, and is probably shaped like a potato. But is this hunk of metal the dead, exposed heart of an ancient protoplanet or could it be a weird iron-rich alien world?

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The spacecraft is packing a suite of four instruments that will enable the science team to determine what happened to Psyche over its lifetime. Right now the team postulates that Psyche is the metallic core of a planetary body that was destroyed billions of years ago through an incredibly violent collision with another world. There’s evidence to indicate that Psyche was once molten, and cooled after having its crust stripped away.

Planetary impacts, such as a meteor slamming into the Earth, have been studied for as long as scientists have been studying planets. Understanding these events are a fundamental aspect of planetary science. They can tell us the age of a planetary surface, and much more. Historically, impact studies have focused on rocky worlds, and recently icy bodies. But what happens on a metal world? No one knows.

What do you think?

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