| Title | NASA Selects Two Missions to Visit Asteroids | |
| Date | Tuesday January 10 2017, @01:38AM | |
| Author | CoolHand | |
| Topic | ||
| from the prepping-for-armageddon dept. | ||
NASA has selected two new missions to explore asteroids. One mission will visit several Jupiter trojans, while the other will visit 16 Psyche, the most massive metallic M-type asteroid and the eleventh most massive asteroid known:
NASA has selected two missions that have the potential to open new windows on one of the earliest eras in the history of our solar system – a time less than 10 million years after the birth of our sun. The missions, known as Lucy and Psyche, were chosen from five finalists and will proceed to mission formulation, with the goal of launching in 2021 and 2023, respectively.
[...] Lucy, a robotic spacecraft, is scheduled to launch in October 2021. It's slated to arrive at its first destination, a main belt asteroid, in 2025. From 2027 to 2033, Lucy will explore six Jupiter Trojan asteroids. These asteroids are trapped by Jupiter's gravity in two swarms that share the planet's orbit, one leading and one trailing Jupiter in its 12-year circuit around the sun. The Trojans are thought to be relics of a much earlier era in the history of the solar system, and may have formed far beyond Jupiter's current orbit.
[...] The Psyche mission will explore one of the most intriguing targets in the main asteroid belt – a giant metal asteroid, known as 16 Psyche, about three times farther away from the sun than is the Earth. This asteroid measures about 130 miles (210 kilometers) in diameter and, unlike most other asteroids that are rocky or icy bodies, is thought to be comprised mostly of metallic iron and nickel, similar to Earth's core. Scientists wonder whether Psyche could be an exposed core of an early planet that could have been as large as Mars, but which lost its rocky outer layers due to a number of violent collisions billions of years ago.
The budgets for Discovery Program class missions are capped at $450 million.
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printed from SoylentNews, NASA Selects Two Missions to Visit Asteroids on 2024-04-19 16:08:47