A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Oct. 13, 2023. The spacecraft will travel to the metallic asteroid Psyche, where it will enter orbit in 2029 and be the first spacecraft to explore a metal-rich asteroid.
— NASA’s Psyche spacecraft rocketed away Friday on a six-year journey to a rare metal-covered asteroid.
“The pressure is too high. The temperature is too high. The technology is impossible,” she said. “But there’s one way in our solar system that we can look at a metal core and that is by going to this asteroid.” Scientists envision spiky metal craters, huge metal cliffs and metal-encrusted eroded lava flows greenish-yellow from sulfur — “almost certain to be completely wrong,” according to Elkins-Tanton. It's also possible that trace amounts of gold, silver, platinum or iridium — iron-loving elements — could be dissolved in the asteroid's iron and nickel, she said.
Led by Arizona State University on NASA’s behalf, the $1.2 billion mission will use a roundabout route to get to the asteroid. The van-size spacecraft with solar panels big enough to fill a tennis court will swoop past Mars for a gravity boost in 2026. Three years later, it will reach the asteroid and attempt to go into orbit around it, circling as high as 440 miles and as close as 47 miles until at least 2031.
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