Elon Musk's SpaceX, Nasa to send probe to study Psyche asteroid

Tech billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX and Nasa are ready to send the US space agency's mission Friday to tap into the details of the metal-rich asteroid Psyche that is anticipated to be a remnant of a small planet — something experts are still wondering. 

The study is aimed to trace the genesis of the asteroid to gain a deeper understanding of the new celestial rock as the astronomers called it an entirely new phenomenon.

The space rock Psyche is at a distance of 2.2 billion miles (3.5 billion kilometres) away and is believed to offer insight into the interior of planets like Earth.

Scientist Lindy Elkins-Tanton told reporters during a briefing: "We've visited either in person or robotically worlds made of rock, worlds made of ice and worlds made of gas... but this will be our first time visiting a world that has a metal surface."

Nasa and Elon Musk's company scheduled the flight Friday at 10:19am Eastern Time from Kennedy Space Center, using a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, with a backup window on Saturday if weather conditions did not allow.

Trailing a blue glow from its next-generation electric propulsion system and flanked by two large solar arrays, the van-sized mission should arrive at its destination in the Asteroid Belt, between Mars and Jupiter, in July 2029.

Psyche to study metal asteroid

Over the following two years, it will deploy its suite of advanced instruments to look for evidence of an ancient magnetic field, probe its chemical composition, and study the minerals and topography of Psyche.

Scientists think Psyche, named after the goddess of the soul in Greek mythology, could be part of the iron-rich core of a "planetesimal," a building block of all rocky planets.

It could also be something else — a leftover piece of an iron-rich, primordial solar system object that's not yet been documented.

"This is our one way to see a core," said Elkins-Tanton. "We say tongue in cheek that we're going to outer space to explore inner space."

Psyche is thought to have an irregular, potato-like shape, measuring 173 miles (280 kilometres) across at its widest point — though it's never actually been seen up close.

Until recently, scientists thought it was overwhelmingly composed of metal — but analyses based on reflected radar and light now indicate that metal probably comprises between 30-60%, with the rest being rock.

Less weight

The mission will include several technological innovations.

The Psyche spacecraft, named after the asteroid, will test out next-generation communications based on lasers, rather than radio waves — a step Nasa compares to upgrading old telephone lines on Earth to fibre optics.

Deep Space Optical Communications, as the system is called, "was designed to demonstrate 10 to 100 times the data-return capacity of state-of-the-art radio systems used in space today," said Abi Biswas of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a statement.

Psyche also uses a special kind of propulsion system called "Hall-effect thrusters" that harnesses the energy from solar panels to create electric and magnetic fields that, in turn, expel charged atoms of xenon gas.

The thrust it exerts is roughly equal to the weight of an AA battery in your hand. But in the void of space, the spacecraft will accelerate continuously to tens of thousands of miles per hour.

Such systems avoid the need to carry thousands of pounds of chemical fuel into space, and Psyche will be the first time they are used beyond lunar orbit.