from the take-two-coins-and-two-barley-cakes dept.
Nasa is prepping a mission to the asteroid Psyche (formally '16 Psyche') to be launched in 2022. Psyche is an especially interesting asteroid due to it's unique composition.
The asteroid belt is composed of three types of asteroid: C-type (carbonaceous, ~75 percent of all asteroids), S-type (silicate-rich, ~17 percent of asteroids) and M-type (metal-rich), which are roughly 10 percent of the total population ... 16 Psyche is an M-type asteroid made of iron-nickel. What makes it unusual is that it's believed to be the now-exposed core of a protoplanet. It's also estimated to be worth $10,000 quadrillion dollars
Psyche presents unique opportunities:
First, it's the only known 'iron world' in the solar system. Second, it's likely the closest we will ever come to examining the core of an actual planet.
The spacecraft that will head to Psyche is in the preliminary design stages. According to Jim Bell, the deputy principal investigator of the Psyche mission:
"We are trying to prepare for any eventuality, no matter what it's like. Our instruments will make interesting measurements, observations and discoveries that will allow us to put the history of that object back together."
The spacecraft will use a gravity assist from Mars in 2023 and arrive at Psyche in 2026. It is hoped that examining Psyche will provide us with much more information about early protoplanets and planetary formation.
No word if the asteroid Cupid will be nearby when the spacecraft and asteroid rendezvous.
Related Stories
Falcon Heavy to launch NASA Psyche asteroid mission
NASA awarded a contract to SpaceX Feb. 28 for the launch of a mission to a large metallic asteroid on the company's Falcon Heavy rocket.
NASA said that it will use a Falcon Heavy to launch its Psyche mission in July 2022 from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The contract is valued at $117 million, which includes the launch itself and other mission-related costs.
Psyche is one of two missions NASA selected in January 2017 for its Discovery program of relatively low-cost planetary science missions. Psyche will use a Mars flyby in 2023 to arrive at its destination, an asteroid also called Psyche, in January 2026. The spacecraft will go into orbit around the asteroid, one of the largest in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The asteroid is primarily made of iron and nickel, and could be the remnant of a core of a protoplanet that attempted to form there before high-speed collisions with other planetesimals broke it apart. Planetary scientists believe that studies of the asteroid Psyche could help them better understand the formation of the solar system.
The Psyche mission is led by Arizona State University, with Maxar the prime contractor for the spacecraft. The launch will also carry two smallsat secondary payloads: Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE), which will study the Martian atmosphere, and Janus, which will study binary asteroids.
Also at TechCrunch.
Previously:
NASA Selects Two Missions to Visit Asteroids
NASA Asteroid Mission -- Metals "Worth" Ten Thousand Quadrillion Dollars
SpaceX Drops Protest of "Lucy" Contract, Gets Double Asteroid Redirection Test Contract
Nasa Contemplates Mission to the Core of a Protoplanet in 2022
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2019, @07:53AM (2 children)
(75+17+10=102)%
(Score: 3, Touché) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 23 2019, @08:14AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2019, @01:42PM
Simple rounding nearly does it.
Oh and hey, correcting someone on ther understanding of stats, may mean you need to hand in your anti/{vacc,religio} card.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2019, @07:54AM (12 children)
Delivery FOB. LOOK OUT!!!! RUNAWAY!! Not in 1956, now, you idiot!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 23 2019, @08:13AM (11 children)
Crash it on Earth and see what price you'll get on it (hint: short any iron ore futures when you have the confirmation of the impact then blow the money on hookers and blackjack. Either capitalism dies together with the whole humanity or the oversupply of iron will cause the price to crash, you'll be covered in both cases).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 23 2019, @08:51AM (8 children)
The other question is whether it's even that much iron at all.
16 Psyche has mass (2.23±0.36)×10^19 kg, of which 90% is supposedly iron, so let's call that 2*10^19 kg.
Earth has mass 5.98×10^24 kg, of which 32% is supposedly iron by mass, so let's call that 2*10^24 kg.
So this thing that's so unimaginably expensive to do *anything* with, apart from just an unmanned visit, has .001% of the iron that we're already sitting on top of.
OK, most of that is in the core, which makes most of it rather inaccessible, but why do they pay attention to the no-accurate-figure-put-on-it-but-surely-horrific costs of getting access to gazillions of tons of iron on earth, and completely ignore, or even pretend it's low, the no-accurate-figure-put-on-it-but-surely-horrific costs of getting access to gazillions of tons of iron from the asteroid belt. Everything seems to be predicated on the made up fact that we have self-supporting mining colony ships. We don't. We haven't even sent a single human outside low earth orbit for decades.
Why do people's brains evapourate when anything to do with space is mentioned?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday April 23 2019, @09:21AM (2 children)
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=26810&page=1&cid=713558#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
Using asteroid materials to build things in space that don't come back to Earth might be the killer app.
But if you want to bring things to the surface of Earth, you could try getting gold, platinum, etc. only and leaving the iron where it is. Then do a soft landing on Earth with BFR or other propelled lander. It seems like it could actually be worth it if the fully reusable launcher is cheap enough, but finding and collecting X tons of pure gold or other element won't be easy.
If the heat shielded asteroid idea works, it would be pretty incredible. You could just cut up chunks of asteroid, smash them into a desert at relatively low speed, and mine them in place. It sounds like it could be cheaper than rocket landings. Hopefully something does not go wrong with the heat shield.
$10,000 quadrillion and similar estimates are laughable, but when companies get serious about asteroid mining, they will have to produce some real numbers on how much money they expect to make per load, unless they are just trying to fleece investors.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 23 2019, @10:03AM (1 child)
Literally!
As a tungsten substitute, iron will be good enough: with cheaper iron and less manufacturing costs, 3x longer rods form God [wikipedia.org] is not a problem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Tuesday April 23 2019, @10:09AM
Space Force announces asteroid mining mission (to wipe out China)
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 23 2019, @09:51AM (2 children)
I blame takyon for it, seems to be contagious (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday April 23 2019, @10:05AM (1 child)
May you get succed by a black hole.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 23 2019, @10:29AM
I won't make a visible accretion disk, that's a promise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2019, @10:24AM (1 child)
Because Capitalism as pushed by the west and adopted by Russia/China cannot survive without an ever expanding supply of resources.
For all the jabs at aboriginal groups, most of them knew how to balance their expansion against the available resources. The greatest travesty of the europeans was washing like a plague over the world and convincing everyone it was time to extract as many resources as they can as fast as they can with no considerations for the cost to the planet.
Once we begin doing the same to the rest of the solar system, will it help improve live on Earth? Or will it lead tp further ruin, both on planet and off?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2019, @07:33PM
Yep. The Accumulation of Capital [marxists.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2019, @08:55AM (1 child)
it's 112 km in size. you have a better chance of being paid if you stop it from crashing on Earth.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday April 23 2019, @09:47AM
the diameter is 216+/-12 km [wikipedia.org]
If nobody interferes, I'm already doing it - almost circular orbit, stable between Mars and Jupiter, for many millions of years.
Now, I'll take my chances: where's my pay?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday April 23 2019, @06:48PM
There's not a chance in hell they would find anything like that in the core of the planet we happen to be standing on, right?
What's that old cliche about looking elsewhere for things we have right here?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by tedd on Wednesday April 24 2019, @06:38AM
What is this "Nasa"? Surely you don't mean National Aeronautics and Space Administration?