NASA’s highly anticipated psyche mission finally has a launch date

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Asteroid 16 Psyche is estimated to be worth $10,000 quadrillion. The asteroid was originally discovered by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis in 1852 and has been an intriguing object since then. NASA planned to launch its Psyche mission in 2022, and mission construction on it was going well in 2021. However, the mission was delayed. Now, NASA is finally ready to greenlight a launch date for the task and it’s happening this fall.

According to new reports from Chron, the Psyche mission will see a spacecraft of the same name lift off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida between October 5 and October 25 this year. The spacecraft will then complete a 280-million-mile voyage to the asteroid, where it will orbit it for 26 months. The voyage is so long the spacecraft isn’t expected to reach the asteroid until 2029.

This particular mission is extremely important, though, as the worth of the asteroid and its significance in being the first metal-rich world that NASA will visit—all of the previous worlds that NASA missions have traveled to have been made of rock or ice. The Psyche mission will be the first of its kind for the agency.

The origins of this intriguing asteroid aren’t quite clear, though astronomers believe it may be the remnant core of an ancient planetesimal, a newly forming planet, which lost its outer rocky layers to violent collisions when our solar system was first forming. The asteroid measures 140 miles wide and orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.

It’s shaped similarly to a potato, astronomers have deduced, making it the most expensive potato-shaped object humanity has ever discovered. Asteroids like 16 Psyche are part of why many have begun pushing for asteroid mining to pick up as a way to gather Earth-like metals instead of completely depleting our own planet’s resources.

Of course, the success of this mission’s long voyage will probably play a part in how other missions to the distant object go. For now, it’s good to at least have a launch window in place for NASA’s Psyche mission, especially if it can happen this year.

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