![]() ![]() Signatories to the treaty, including the US, Russia, India, China and Australia, can't claim sovereignty over asteroids, the Moon or Mars. Who owns an asteroid? Under the conditions of the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty, the answer is "nobody". Rebecca Allen, an astronomer at Swinburne University of Technology, says "there are going to be insane challenges you have to overcome, and advancing technology to do that is going to come back to us and benefit us on the planet". Professor Shepard noted it would be foolhardy to rush to the asteroid with a stack of mining equipment before we have this type of preliminary information to plan our journey. The idea of mining the asteroid remains a pipe dream, though, because scientists don't know enough about Psyche's surface features and composition. without making a big hole in the ground". That number is highly speculative, as Professor Elkins-Tanton noted in a 2017 interview, and the bigger problem is we'd have to find a way to mine its minerals.ġ6 Psyche would be a great resource, said Andrew Tomkins, an earth and planetary scientist at Monash University, "if you can find a way to bring it down to the Earth's surface. Lindy Elkins-Tanton, lead mission scientist, once suggested the asteroid could be worth that amount. That's the $US10,000 quadrillion ($15,600 quadrillion) question. "Regardless of what the mission finds, we'll have a new piece of the puzzle for understanding the early Solar System and the formation of planetary bodies." How much is 16 Psyche worth? There are so many unanswered questions about Psyche's formation and evolution, Ms Nichols-Fleming said. It carries a magnetometer, hoping to sense any remnant magnetism the asteroid might exhibit.Īnother theory suggests 16 Psyche may have been moulded by an extreme type of volcanism that is no longer active. If it is a remnant core, the Psyche spacecraft will find out. "I don't think any theory has been completely ruled out, but the earliest idea that Psyche is a remnant metal core is probably the least favoured right now." Later measurements of the rock's density have suggested this is less likely, Professor Shepard said. One of the earliest theories suggest the asteroid might be a remnant core of a planet, left over from the earliest days of the Solar System. There are a number of competing theories. The biggest question is: What is 16 Psyche? It's very likely the asteroid is rich in iron and nickel and there's also likely to be trace elements of cobalt, titanium and rare metals, like platinum and palladium.īut while this provides the best guess at what metals might be on the asteroid, the truth is scientists aren't yet sure of their abundance. "We use the metals that have been observed in iron meteorites as examples for what metal Psyche might be made of," said Fiona Nichols-Fleming, a PhD candidate at Brown University in the US studying 16 Psyche. Scientists can study their chemical composition and structure to determine which asteroids they may have originated from. We do know that many meteorites - the rocks that fall to Earth from space - come from asteroids. However, mission development and workforce issues forced NASA to postpone and re-evaluate the timeline. The mission was originally scheduled to launch in September 2022 and arrive at Psyche in 2026. The spacecraft will be launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, one of the world's most powerful rockets. If the window is missed because of weather or other factors, it gets pushed to the following day. ![]() The potential launch time is 1:38am AEDT every day. ![]() Psyche's launch window was intended to open on October 5 but NASA delayed the launch by a week, to October 12, to allow more time to fine-tune the spacecraft's thrusters. When is NASA launching the Psyche mission? When it reaches orbit around Psyche, it will be the first time that humans have visited a metal asteroid. The mission was selected as part of NASA's Discovery program in 2017. Next, there's the Psyche mission, which consists of a NASA-built orbiter that's also named Psyche. Most of the time, scientists just call it Psyche. The "16" denotes that the rock was the 16th minor planetary body discovered. It's named after the goddess of the soul in Greek mythology. It starts with 16 Psyche, the official name of the asteroid that was discovered in 1852 by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis. Psyche can refer to three things, making it a little confusing. ![]()
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