319E-338-Psyche Bound

When the material came together to form our home planet, gravity was strong enough to pull the heavy materials like iron to the center, giving our planet an iron core. The vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of known asteroids and comets orbiting our Sun are made of mixtures of rocks and ices of various substances. They do not have enough gravity to cause heavy materials to move to their centers. From scientific measurements the asteroid Psyche appears to be composed almost entirely of iron, nickel, and possibly other valuable metals. Perhaps the Massachusetts sized, 130 mile diameter, asteroid Psyche is the core of a Mars sized planet whose outer layers were blown away by collisions early in the history of the solar system. Although NASA has no plans to bring back material for earthlings to use, space mining enthusiasts are interested in Psyche since the metal in this asteroid may be worth 10,000 quadrillion dollars on today's market. The Psyche spacecraft is scheduled for launch in 2023. It will get a boost in speed from the Earth's gravity in 2024, fly by Mars in 2025, arrive at the asteroid in 2030, and then orbit this strange world for at least 6 months taking scientific data. Since we can not visit our home planet's core a trip to Psyche will enable us to explore the unknown nature of what is below our feet and provide clues about the exotic mixtures of metals and minerals which may be hiding there.