Why is NASA sending a spacecraft to a metal world? - Linda T. Elkins-Tanton
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Somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, about 500 million kilometers away from Earth, floats a metallic orb the size of Massachusetts. That’s no moon...it’s 16 Psyche, one of the most massive asteroids in the solar system. And it is the asteroid our droids are looking for. We humans have managed to send robotic spacecraft to all sorts of environments in space – the gas clouds of Saturn and Jupiter, the icy wastes of Europa, and the rocky dunes of Mars. But Psyche’s surface isn’t just hard rock – it’s heavy metal. The asteroid mostly consists of nickel and iron, by far the largest known body with such a composition. But we don’t yet know what it looks like; our best current radar images show a pixelated smudge. That’ll change in 2026, when an unmanned spacecraft sent as part of NASA’s Discovery Program is scheduled to arr...
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Somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, about 500 million kilometers away from Earth, floats a metallic orb the size of Massachusetts. That’s no moon...it’s 16 Psyche, one of the most massive asteroids in the solar system. And it is the asteroid our droids are looking for. We humans have managed to send robotic spacecraft to all sorts of environments in space – the gas clouds of Saturn and Jupiter, the icy wastes of Europa, and the rocky dunes of Mars. But Psyche’s surface isn’t just hard rock – it’s heavy metal. The asteroid mostly consists of nickel and iron, by far the largest known body with such a composition. But we don’t yet know what it looks like; our best current radar images show a pixelated smudge. That’ll change in 2026, when an unmanned spacecraft sent as part of NASA’s Discovery Program is scheduled to arr...
