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posted by martyb on Friday January 20 2017, @02:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the iron-is-a-precious-metal? dept.

NASA wants to uncover the mystery behind the asteroid “16 Psyche.” that may contain a priceless treasure trove of minerals. “We’ve been to all the different planets, we’ve been to other asteroids. But we’ve never visited a body that has been made of entirely metal,” said Carol Polanskey, project scientist for the Psyche mission. Now NASA, led by researchers at Arizona State University, plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to orbit 16 Psyche – an asteroid roughly the size of Massachusetts, made of iron and other precious metals. The mission’s leader estimates that the iron alone on today’s market would be worth $10,000 quadrillion.

Previously: NASA Selects Two Missions to Visit Asteroids


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @07:20AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @07:20AM (#456425)

    It's literally the same discipline.

    More than that, it's literally the first half of the same mission. Capturing an asteroid requires landing on it, applying thrust on the correct direction until it's trajectory is within Earth's gravitational sphere of influence, slowing it down bellow escape velocity once it's actually there and finally positioning it in the correct orbit or in an aerobreaking suborbital trajectory depending on whether you want to utilize it in orbit or on the surface. Deflection only requires landing on it and applying thrust in any direction perpendicular to the prograde vector (that is, the current direction of movement) and would normally take considerably less fuel than aiming it for a capture.