NASA and the Palo Alto satellite manufacturer are now working in partnership to jointly send the spacecraft to an asteroid of choice, according to phys.org portal.
The detection and study of asteroids is currently one of the main tasks of NASA and the upcoming mission will allow scientists to obtain research equipment to study the unique asteroid and its composition.
NASA's program to improve our understanding of the solar system by exploring planets, satellites and other celestial bodies was announced last month. Two asteroid-oriented missions have been selected with a price cap of $ 450 million and launch in the next decade. One of the missions involves sending a spacecraft to Psyche, an asteroid named after the Greek goddess of the soul, which is made entirely of metal.
It is believed that metallic asteroids are one of the most poorly studied objects in our solar system, since it has never been possible to see them at a sufficiently close distance.
“We've seen rocky planets, gas giants, ice planets, rocky asteroids up close, but never have metal asteroids,” said Jim Bell, professor of planetary sciences at Arizona State University, where the team is conducting the Psyche mission.
At the moment, scientists speculate that the asteroid may be the metal core of a planet that was stripped of its rocky outer layers at the time of destruction billions of years ago.
