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Asteroid 16 Psyche is the heaviest known M-type asteroid, and may be an exposed iron core of a protoplanet, the remnant of a violent collision with another object that stripped off its mantle and crust. On January 4, 2017, the Psyche mission was selected for NASA's Discovery #14 mission. [9] It was launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. [10]
Upon reaching Psyche, the probe is set to circle it in a series of gradually descending orbits, ending up a mere 40 miles (64 km) from the asteroid's surface, before finishing the mission in ...
It would then orbit Psyche for 26 months, scanning the asteroid with instruments built to measure the asteroid’s gravity, magnetic proprieties and composition. Psyche measures roughly 173 miles ...
The Psyche mission will arrive at the metallic asteroid — also known as an M-type asteroid, and it’s the largest in the solar system — in 2029 and study it in orbit for about two years.
On 30 September 2015, the Psyche orbiter mission was one of five Discovery Program semifinalist proposals. [44] The mission was approved by NASA on 4 January 2017 and was originally targeted to launch in October 2023, with an Earth gravity assist maneuver in 2024, a Mars flyby in 2025, and arriving at the asteroid in 2030. [45]
Similar propulsion technologies were used for NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, which launched in 2007 on a mission to study two large objects in the main asteroid belt. The Psyche mission, however, will ...
Psyche, an asteroid belt mission, aims to send a spacecraft to the M-type asteroid 16 Psyche. The spacecraft will study the asteroid, believed to be the exposed core of an early Solar System protoplanet from orbit, with the goal of better understanding the processes of the early formation of the Solar System ; studies not possible on existing ...
An experiment aboard NASA’s Psyche mission achieved “first light” by sending and receiving its ... The mission could determine whether the asteroid is the exposed core of an early planetary ...