For the first time in history, NASA’s spacecraft will head to the asteroid Psyche, a celestial body made of metal rather than rock, ice, or gas.
By studying this cosmic strangeness, scientists hope to learn more about the inner cores of rocky planets like ours. Or it could create a catalog of previously unknown types of cosmic bodies.
Here are some big numbers and fun facts to wow your friends about this mission.
10 quintillion dollars
If Psyche were mineable, its iron, nickel and gold deposits would be worth an eye-popping 10,000 quintillion dollars (or $10 billion), according to estimates reported by Forbes magazine.
But Lindy Elkins Tanton, the mission’s principal investigator in charge of the calculations, said it was nothing more than “a fun intellectual exercise with no truth to it.”
“As a species, we don’t have the technology to bring Psyche back to Earth,” she says. stated at a recent press conference. Any attempt to do so could backfire by causing an apocalyptic conflict, but even if the attempt were successful, it would flood the metals market and reduce the value of the metal to zero, she said. Told.
[Note: NASA and SpaceX are targeting launch at 10:19 a.m. EDT (1419 UTC) Friday, Oct. 13. – Ed.]
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electric journey
psyche probe will be launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, but will switch to a more efficient propulsion method to complete its 2.2 billion mile (3.6 billion km) journey.
Psyche’s solar array converts light into electricity, which powers four solar cells or “Hall effect” thrusters. They use electromagnetic fields to accelerate and release ions (charged atoms) of xenon, the same inert gas used in car headlights and plasma televisions.
The resulting blue glow is reminiscent of Star Trek, but it’s not warp drive. The actual force exerted at any given moment is approximately equal to the weight of an AA battery in the palm of your hand.
But in space, probes continuously accelerate to tens of thousands of miles per hour.
laser communication
As deep space missions demand increasingly higher data rates, NASA is turning to laser-based systems to complement radio frequency-based communications.
Psyche plans to conduct technology experiments onboard to demonstrate a “10x increase in traditional communications data rates.” Said Abi Biswas, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory – Enables the transmission of higher-resolution images, more scientific data, and streaming video.
NASA will fire a laser beam from the JPL facility in Table Mountain, California, and the spacecraft will beam the signal toward Caltech’s Palomar Observatory. It is hoped that this technology will eventually be used for manned missions to Mars.
gravity science
Psyche has a suite of specialized scientific instruments to study the asteroid’s chemical and mineral composition and look for signs of an ancient magnetic field.
But the science team will also use Psyche’s trusty old radio system to study the asteroid’s gravitational field using the Doppler effect.
Just as the pitch of an ambulance siren increases as it approaches, planetary scientist Ben Weiss says, “If you look at the pitch and frequency of the radio waves coming from the antenna, you can predict the pitch and frequency of the radio waves coming from the antenna. “You can tell the speed.” towards you, getting lower as it moves away from you.
By tracking the speed of the spacecraft at various points around the asteroid, scientists can determine how bumpy the gravitational field is, which can provide clues about its interior composition and structure.
Less metal, more rock?
Until recently, there was widespread consensus that Psyche was almost entirely metallic, given its brightness. This is consistent with the theory that the planet’s core was exposed when an ancient collision blew away its rocky crust and mantle.
But one researcher says the way the gravitational pull of neighboring objects suggests that their densities are lower than all iron bodies should be. 2022 Papers By researchers at Brown University.
One possibility they proposed was that iron-spewing volcanoes carried metal up from Psyche’s core and coated the surface above the rocky mantle, creating a structure that effectively resembled a metal sandwich. Thing.
We won’t know for sure until 2029, when the Psyche spacecraft reaches its destination.
© Agence France-Presse
