A NASA spacecraft, with a budget of $1.2 billion, has been launched from Florida today, embarking on a journey spanning 3.6 billion kilometers to reach a metal-rich asteroid unlike any previously studied by scientists.

This extraordinary space rock is known as Psyche and stands as the largest metallic object within the Solar System.

Researchers believe that Psyche may represent the core of a planet that never reached its full formation, Nature reported.

If this hypothesis holds, the exploration of Psyche will offer a unique glimpse into the ancient processes that shaped the formation of planets in the Solar System billions of years ago.

The composition of Psyche is not entirely clear, but scientific measurements indicate that “at least part of the surface has got to be actually metal” as noted by Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the principal investigator of the mission and a planetary scientist at Arizona State University in Tempe.

The primary objective is to observe this metallic surface.

However, the journey to the asteroid will be an extended one. The spacecraft, also named Psyche, is not anticipated to reach its destination until 2029.

Written by staff