NASA's Psyche Mission: Exploring a Metal World for Clues about Earth's Core and a Quadrillion-Dollar Asteroid

NASA is preparing to launch the Psyche spacecraft on a mission to study the metal-rich asteroid known as Psyche, located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists hope to determine whether Psyche is the exposed core of an early planetary building block, shedding light on planet formation. The spacecraft will arrive at the asteroid in 2029 and spend two years studying it with a suite of scientific instruments. Psyche is the largest metallic asteroid in our solar system and is believed to have originated as the iron-rich core of a planetesimal. The mission aims to answer questions about the nature of Psyche and provide insights into the composition of Earth's core.