Featured Image Credit: Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology/Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Topics: News, US News, NASA, Science, Technology
Kit Roberts
Topics: News, US News, NASA, Science, Technology
NASA has issued an update on the enormous asteroid which has been estimated to be worth one hundred quintillion dollars.
If you were wondering how many zeros that is, it's 19 zeros, or $10,000,000,000,000,000,000.
This estimate of monetary value is due to the high quantities of precious metals contained within the asteroid.
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Psyche is named after the Greek goddess of the soul, and was discovered in 1852 by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis.
In 2023, NASA launched a probe to investigate Psyche from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida in order to study the asteroid and try to gain some insight into its history and where it may have originated in the solar system.
It was the 16th asteroid to be discovered, and is thought to be composed of between 30 percent and 60 percent metals.
These percentages include gold, iron, platinum, palladium, and nickel - all of which are used in a number of industries.
Of course, flooding the market with vast quantities of minerals would have an impact on their price, but you get the idea of just how much the asteroid contains.
There's also the slight issue that the asteroid is located some 235 million to 309 million miles away from the Sun, depending on where it is in its orbital path.
That could make actually accessing the asteroid slightly challenging - especially to retrieve any of the resources within.
In fact, it would take around six years to reach the asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter, as per The Daily Express US.
As part of the journey to Psyche, NASA plans a manoeuvre in 2026 using Mars' gravitational field to 'slingshot' the probe towards the asteroid.
If all goes to plan with the journey then NASA's probe should be arriving at Psyche in 2029.
Scientists currently think that Psyche was formed as a result of violent collisions during the infancy of the Solar System.
This means that studying the asteroid itself could offer valuable insight into the formation of the Earth's core.
NASA has invested approximately $1.2 billion to develop, launch, and operate the Psyche mission.
Prior to the launch in a statement released in July 2023, NASA said: "Teams of engineers and technicians are working almost around the clock to ensure the orbiter is ready to journey 2.5 billion miles to a metal-rich asteroid that may tell us more about planetary cores and how planets form."
The vessel might be travelling at 84,000 miles per hour, but given that it has to travel over 164 million miles from Earth - or around 264 million kilometres - it's still got a long way to go.