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NASA launches mission to metal-rich asteroid worth £8,000 quadrillion

Picture NASA
Picture NASA

A new NASA mission has offered an insight into the astounding mineral wealth lying around in our solar system – as one scientist calculated the worth of the asteroid to be £8,000 quadrillion.

American companies such as Planetary Resources – backed by Titanic director James Cameron – are already planning to send robotic vehicles to mine precious metals and rare resources from asteroids.

Planetary Resources describes asteroids as ‘the low-hanging fruit of our solar system,’ and says, ‘, “a single 500-metre platinum-rich asteroid contains more platinum than has been mined in the history of humanity.’

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NASA’s Psyche mission is set to launch in 2023 – and will target a metal-rich asteroid known as 16 Psyche.

Psyche principal investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University in Tempe said that the 124-mile wide asteroid would be worth the astronomical sum if we could somehow drag it back to Earth.

 (NASA)
(NASA)

Elkins Tanton said, ‘Even if we could grab a big metal piece and drag it back here … what would you do? Could you kind of sit on it and hide it and control the global resource – kind of like diamonds are controlled corporately – and protect your market? What if you decided you were going to bring it back and you were just going to solve the metal resource problems of humankind for all time? This is wild speculation obviously.’

The Psyche mission will explore one of the most intriguing targets in the main asteroid belt – a giant metal asteroid, known as 16 Psyche, about three times farther away from the sun than is the Earth.

This asteroid measures about 130 miles in diameter and, unlike most other asteroids that are rocky or icy bodies, is thought to be comprised mostly of metallic iron and nickel, similar to Earth’s core.

Scientists wonder whether Psyche could be an exposed core of an early planet that could have been as large as Mars, but which lost its rocky outer layers due to a number of violent collisions billions of years ago.

The mission will help scientists understand how planets and other bodies separated into their layers – including cores, mantles and crusts – early in their histories.