The story seems taken from a science fiction film, but it is a reality that is in the sights of NASA: in the vastness of space there is an asteroid that is worth more than the global economy of our planet.
This is the asteroid Psyche 16, discovered in 1852, which measures 226 kilometers in diameter and is located between Mars and Jupiter, About 370 million kilometers from Earth.
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Last October, a studio used the space telescope Hubble to obtain a more detailed picture of this asteroid, considered today by the scientific community as one of the most valuable of those known.
Psyche 16 is on the radar of NASA, which along with Space X, the company of the famous billionaire Elon Musk, plan an exploration mission for 2022. But why is there so much interest?
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Well, this asteroid is a giant rock that lies within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Different observations indicate that it is made mainly of metals and experts estimate that it was part of the core of a planet that failed in its formation, which could give clues as to how the Earth’s core and that of other planets formed.
In an interview with the BBC, Tracy Becker, planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Texas, USA, and who is part of the latest research on the surface of this giant rock, said:
“We’ve seen other meteorites that are mostly metallic, but what makes Psyche unique is that it may be made entirely of iron and nickel.”.
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And not only that. It is believed that in addition to iron and nickel, the asteroid could also contain platinum and gold, and this is precisely where its value lies. In fact, that’s why some say so ‘The golden asteroid‘.
It is difficult to determine what its current net worth would be on Earth, but a 2019 projection estimates that the total economic value of all Psyche metals could exceed $ 10,000 trillion.
This is the outline of the spaceship that will explore 16 Psyche.
That being the case, given that the value of the global economy in 2019 was US $ 142 trillion, according to the German data portal Statistician, it could then be said that Psyche minerals are worth about 70,000 times more.
On a possible exploration, it is known that Space X and NASA plan to launch an exploratory spacecraft in 2022 (see image) that would reach the asteroid in 2026, and this would be the first mission in which NASA would investigate a metal mass instead of one formed by rocks and ice.
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“For 21 months in orbit, the spacecraft will map and study 16 properties of Psyche using a multispectral image generator, a gamma-neutron gamma-spectrometer, a magnetometer, and a radio instrument (to measure gravity),” he explains. NASA.
Specifically, he adds, “The goal of the mission is, among other things, to determine if Psyche is really the nucleus of an object the size of a planet.”.
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ELTIEMPO.COM