Featured Image Credit: Maxar/ASU/P. Rubin/NASA/JPL-Caltech / NASA
An asteroid buried deep in space has a mind boggling value of $10,000 quadrillion and NASA is closer than ever to reaching it.
Nestled between Mars and Jupiter lies a metal rich asteroid which scientists reckon is packed with iron, nickel and gold.
It's name is 16 Psyche and scientists are determined to reach it (and soon) with a mission of the same name, Psyche.
The Psyche spacecraft is currently on its long journey to the metal-rich asteroid after launching from Kennedy Space Center in Florida back in October 2023. It's objective, according to NASA, is to 'visit an unexplored type of world'.
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According to NASA, the asteroid measures in at a staggering 173 miles (280 km) across and 144 miles (232 km) long, while its surface area is 64,000 square miles (165,800 square km).
"Psyche is by far the largest, and that's why we want to go to it," Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA's science mission directorate, told Space.com.
"Because the smaller ones are more likely to have been changed by things impacting them, whereas the big one, we think, is going to be completely unchanged."
Unfortunately it's no easy feat to reach the asteroid. It's a whopping 2.2 billion miles (3.5 billion km) through space.
According to NASA, for the next year 'the spacecraft will be in what mission planners call "full cruise" mode"' as it journeys toward the asteroid belt.
A post from May of this year said that the orbiter is currently over 190 million miles (300 million km) away and is moving at a speed of 23 miles per second (37 km per second). Eventually, once there is no 'atmospheric drag' to hold it back, the vessel will reach speeds of up to 124,000 mph (200,000 kph).
When it comes to that whopping estimated value, if NASA were to successfully mine the asteroid and bring it back to Earth, every person on the planet would essentially be made billionaires — just to put into perspective how much this asteroid is really worth.
If everything goes according to plan the spacecraft will reach 16 Psyche in late July 2029, beginning its 'prime mission' of collecting data and pictures in August.
From there, the vessel is programmed to head to Mars, where it will obtain a gravity assist to boost its momentum for its ultimate journey back to Earth.
NASA estimates the mission will conclude in November 2013, so stay tuned for a historic month.
