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Watch on - NASA was due on Friday to launch a spacecraft from Florida on its way to Psyche, a distant, metal-rich asteroid that is the solar system's largest-known metallic object and is thought to be the remnant core of an ancient protoplanet.
It would then orbit Psyche for 26 months, scanning the asteroid with instruments built to measure the asteroid's gravity, magnetic proprieties and composition. Psyche measures roughly 173 miles across at its widest point. But the Psyche mission has nothing to do with space mining, according to scientists. Its objective is to gain insight into the formation of Earth and other rocky planets that are built around cores of molten metal."So we say, tongue-in-cheek, that we're going to outer space to explore inner space," Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche's principal investigator for NASA's mission partner Arizona State University, told a briefing for reporters on Tuesday.
The Psyche orbiter will be released from the SpaceX rocket's cargo bay about five minutes after launch, and take two hours to unfurl its twin solar arrays and point its communications antennae toward Earth, if all goes as planned. Other spaceflight milestones in store for the Psyche mission include a ride-along technology demonstration testing a laser-based communication to send high-bandwidth data to Earth from beyond the moon for the first time.
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