ASU's Psyche mission launch is NASA's 1st trip to study a mostly metal asteroid. Here's why that's important
Arizona State University brought the news of its soon-to-launch NASA space mission to students at ASU Preparatory Academy's downtown Phoenix campus on Thursday.
The mission shares the same name as the asteroid its spacecraft will be traveling to: Psyche. The mission's principal investigator is Lindy Elkins-Tanton, a professor in the ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration.
The Psyche spacecraft is scheduled to launch on Oct. 12 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will travel about 2.2 billion miles to the Psyche asteroid, which is orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter, according to NASA’s website.
It will be NASA's first mission to study an asteroid that has more metal than rock or ice, according to NASA's website.
The mission was selected in 2017 for NASA’s Discovery Program, a series of smaller, cost-effective missions to solar system targets.
According to NASA’s website, scientists think the asteroid could be an exposed core of a planetesimal, which is a “building block of a rocky planet,” or a leftover piece of a “completely different kind of iron-rich body that formed from metal-rich material somewhere in the solar system.”
The mission’s website states that it may be able to show how the Earth’s core came to be — humans are unable to reach Earth’s metal core. The mission will provide images, determine the elemental composition of the asteroid and measure and map its magnetic field.
Carver Bierson, a planetary scientist and postdoctoral research scholar at ASU working on the Psyche Mission, told ASU Prep students at Thursday's event that the Psyche mission is the world’s first mission to visit a “metal world.”
Much is unknown about the asteroid, Bierson told students, but there are some things they do know: it has metal on its surface, it takes five years for it to travel around the sun, and it’s a little bit smaller than Arizona.
“The spacecraft is huge,” Bierson told students. "On there, we have all the tools we need to explore a metal world for the first time,” including two cameras, a magnetometer and a spectrometer.
It’ll be six years before the spacecraft reaches Psyche and the first photos are sent back to Earth, Bierson said. One student said that he’ll have his diploma by then, and Bierson told him he can join the Psyche mission if he wants. Others excitedly raised their hands to ask questions: Is Psyche where Transformers come from? Why is it so small?
Noah Garcia, 17, attended the event to help set up — he's on student government and in the National Honor Society, and he said he loves to help out. But he's also excited about the Psyche mission.
"I really love space, ever since I was a little kid," Garcia said. He and his younger brother used to "stay up late to watch the stars ... in the backyard, with a $20 telescope we bought from Walmart."
He said the mission is "amazing," and added that prior to the event, he didn't know the asteroid might be the core of a minute planet, which he said is "fascinating."
"Exploring that one would give us new light on our own," he said. "I can't wait for them to actually launch."
The live launch broadcast will begin at 9:30 a.m. EDT (6:30 a.m. Arizona time) on Thursday, Oct. 12, and can be viewed on YouTube, Facebook, the NASA app, www.nasa.gov/nasatv, Twitch, Daily Motion and X, formerly known as Twitter.
The spacecraft is set to lift off aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket at 10:16 am EDT. It's expected to arrive at Psyche in 2029 and will orbit the asteroid for at least 26 months, according to NASA's website.
Madeleine Parrish covers K-12 education. Reach her at mparrish@arizonarepublic.com and follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter: @maddieparrish61.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: NASA Psyche mission may give ASU researchers clues about Earth's core
