NASA closes the start date of the mission to discover the asteroid containing the treasure of 10 trillion USD

After many delays, scientists at the US space agency NASA are speeding up the development of spacecraft for the mission to explore asteroid 16 Psyche, which is considered a “treasure”. The universe”.

Accordingly, the amount of minerals including gold, platinum, iron, nickel … existing inside the core of 16 Psyche is estimated to cost up to 10000 million billion USD. This is a huge number, about 130,000 times the value of the global economy, which is about 73.7 trillion USD.

After a period of preparation, NASA’s spacecraft is expected to fly to the asteroid in October 2023, which is one year later than the initial planned launch around August-October 2022.

However, the flight control software encountered a problem that prevented NASA from giving an appropriate launch time frame. After carefully considering the possibility of canceling the 16 Psyche exploration mission, NASA decided that the plan to explore this asteroid would still go ahead. The probe is scheduled to launch on the Falcon Heavy rocket of the company’s Falcon Heavy rocket. SpaceX, 10/10/2023 at the earliest.

“I’m incredibly proud of the Psyche project team. In this review, they’ve proven they’ve made significant progress for the space launch mission. I’m confident the plan will go as it should. expected, and excited by the unique and important scientific value this mission has to offer,” said Laurie Leshin, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Notably, although the launch date is only one year back, the time for NASA’s probe to reach the destination will be 3 years later than planned, from 2026 to 2029, because the spacecraft has missed the “golden” opportunity. ‘ to ‘borrow’ Mars’ gravity along the way, which could give the spacecraft thrust to accelerate. This extra period is so that the 16 Psyche probe can wait for a ‘second chance’.

Previously, in July 2020, NASA announced that it would equip a completely new probe for the Psyche spacecraft, which was used to study the asteroid 16 Psyche with the aim of discovering more information about how planets planet formed.

After reaching its destination, the Psyche will spend 21 months studying the full 16 Psyche with the help of an ultrasound machine, a gamma-ray spectrometer, a neutron spectrometer and a magnetometer. Of course, research is only for scientific purposes, not making money from this asteroid.

It is known that Psyche 16 is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, 750 million km from Earth. This is a region containing billions – even trillions – of asteroids. Most of these asteroids are relatively small, ranging in size from a rock to several thousand feet in diameter. However, some other asteroids are significantly larger in size. 16 Psyche is one of the few such asteroids thanks to its 252km wide.