The Universe is so immense that we will never be able to see it completely; However, some of its most intriguing and mysterious objects are located right in our own solar backyard.
A NASA spacecraft is currently heading at high speed toward such an object, promising to reveal a distant asteroid unlike any we have ever explored.
«For the first time in history, we are exploring a world made not of rock or ice, but metal«the astronomers announce, reports Science Alert.
On its journey to this mysterious object, NASA’s probe is capturing incredible images of the Solar System, including this impressive time-lapse video of the Red Planet.
On May 15, the spacecraft Psyche completed its flyby of Mars, passing just a few 4,600 kilometers from the surface of the red planet to more than 19,848 kilometers per hour.
In addition to capturing the amazing time-lapse video and some stunning images of Mars as a thin nocturnal crescentthe spacecraft achieved two essential objectives, indicates Science Alert.
First, this «dress rehearsal» of its ultimate goal served to further calibrate its sensors, offering a better view of Mars’ head-on collision, which deflects particles around the planet like a ship riding through the waves.
He also captured images of south polar cap of marsrich in water ice, which extends for about 700 kilometers, and its double-ringed Huygens crater.
Second, the Psyche spacecraft gained a significant speed boost by using Mars as a kind of planet-sized catapult, he says. Science Alert.
«We have confirmed that Mars gave the spacecraft a boost of 1,609 km per hour and shifted its orbital plane by approximately 1 degree with respect to the Sun,» explains Don Han, head of navigation for the Psyche mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
The final destination of the ship
The final destination of the spacecraft is an asteroid called Psychein honor of the Greek goddess of the soul, discovered by the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis in 1852.
Astronomers have since hypothesized that potato-shaped Psyche could be the debris-eroded iron core of a planetesimal, the building block of planets, reports Science Alert.
As is often the case with Greek iconography, this asteroid could be partially naked, perhaps showing a metal core exposed like the bare ribs of a torn zombie from the early days of the Solar System, when embryonic planets were smashing into each other to pieces.
Consequently, Psyche is located in a kind of planetary graveyard, three times farther from the Sun than we are, in the asteroid belt that forms the boundary between the rocky and gaseous bodies between Mars and Jupiter.
Psyche has approximately 280 kilometers long in its longest dimension, but its general composition is the subject of controversy, indicates Science Alert.
The world will find out what it’s made of around August 2029, when a mission led by NASA and several institutions, including Arizona State University and Caltech, is scheduled to reach the asteroid.
This fast spacecraft, launching in 2023 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, is also called Psyche and is about the size of an individual tennis court. The ship, which runs on solar energy, also has a set of sensors.
Additionally, an X-band radio communications system will determine the asteroid’s gravitational field and its internal composition, he says. Science Alert.
Whether Psyche is more like a planetary core ravaged by countless past collisions or a pile of debris, like the asteroid Bennu, will be revealed before the decade is out.
GML
