(NewsNation) — An asteroid that could be worth up to $10 quintillion was discovered 172 years ago, and NASA is just now launching a mission to explore it.
Psyche — the name of the asteroid — is thought to contain valuable metals like gold, iron, platinum, palladium and nickel, which could be worth a jaw-dropping amount of money. But it isn’t recently discovered.
The asteroid was first discovered in 1852 by an Italian astronomer. It was the 16th asteroid discovered and was named after the Greek goddess of the soul. With a surface area of 64,000 square miles, scientists believe Psyche is made up of 30% to 60% metal.
But don’t get too excited just yet. Psyche is around 235 million to 309 million miles from the Sun (depending on where it is in orbit), and it would take six years to get to the asteroid. So, mining it for precious metals isn’t likely to happen any time in the foreseeable future.
However, NASA launched a probe to study Psyche in October 2023. The spacecraft will use Mars’ gravitational field in a slingshot maneuver in May 2026, arriving at Psyche in 2029 if all goes according to plan.
Having traveled 2.2 billion miles from launch in Cape Canaveral, Florida, the vessel will be used to study an asteroid made of metal for the first time. (The others NASA has studied have been made of rock or ice.) From there, scientists hope to confirm the composition of Psyche and learn more about its structure.
But the mission isn’t motivated by the quintillions of money the asteroid could be worth. Mining Psyche would be unfeasible well into the future, but there is more to the metal asteroid than potential wealth.
NASA is hoping the mission will shed light on how early planets were formed. Psyche is believed to have been formed from violent collisions that happened as the solar system was born and think studying it could give more insight into how the Earth’s core was formed.