NASA’s Psyche Mission: Facts, Advantages, and Launch Details

CNN Indonesia

Friday, 13 Oct 2023 11:40 WIB

1. Facts about the Psyche space mission that launches tonight 2. What are the advantages of NASA’s Psyche mission?

Illustration. The Psyche space mission is planned to be launched tonight after canceling yesterday’s launch. (Photo: NASA)

Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —

Space mission to a metal asteroid, Psychethe plan is to roll out to outer space tonight, Friday (13/10). This mission was scheduled to launch yesterday, but the flight was canceled due to weather problems.

The United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and SpaceX are targeting this mission to launch on Friday (13/10) at 10:19 EDT or around 21.19 WIB.

This spacecraft will be transported into space using a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA. This spacecraft is scheduled to travel 3.5 billion km.

After that, the spacecraft will arrive at the asteroid 16 Psyche, which is located at the end of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, in 2029.

Once the spacecraft is in place, scientists will study metallic asteroids, which differ from the rock- and ice-dominated objects studied in the past, to learn more about how the solar system’s rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) formed.

What is special about the metallic asteroid Psyche?

Psyche was discovered in 1852. This metal-filled asteroid is considered one of the most interesting objects in the main asteroid belt and scientists have only been able to study it from a distance.

Collect SpaceScientists think that the asteroid consists of the exposed core of a planetesimal, a small body that forms during planet formation when the gas and dust around a star collapses into a solid form.

A planetesimal could eventually accumulate more mass and then become a planet.

But Psyche is thought to have failed to reach planetary status because it collided with another, larger body when the solar system was forming about 4.5 billion years ago, possibly peeling the metal-rich asteroid from its rocky outer shell and exposing its iron-rich core.

This means that studying this 279 km wide asteroid could not only help reveal more about the collision that occurred in the early solar system, but also give scientists clues about the inaccessible iron core of our solar system.

Psyche appears to be a departure from the planets of the solar system that were born from planetesimals. While the rocks of the inner planets of the solar system are full of iron oxide – a chemical compound of iron and oxygen atoms – Psyche lacks this compound.

If Psyche is indeed composed of material left over from the birth of a rocky planet, its existence may indicate another type of planetary formation that diverged from the mechanisms that created Earth.

However, if it turns out that Psyche is not an exposed planetesimal core, the asteroid is still very interesting for scientists because it could mean that it is included in a population of ancient objects in the solar system that have never been seen before.

Astronaut Suits for Space Missions (Photo: CNNIndonesia/Basith Subastian)

The advantages of Psyche’s mission on the next page…

What are the Advantages of NASA’s Psyche Mission?

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2023-10-13 04:40:00
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