Science of Psyche: Unique asteroid holds clues to early solar system

by Jet Propulsion Laboratory

At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, engineers integrate a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer into the agency's Psyche spacecraft. The instrument will help determine the elements that make up its target, an asteroid also named Psyche. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Set to launch next year, NASA's Psyche mission marks the first time the agency has set out to explore an asteroid richer in metal than rock or ice.

More than 150 years have passed since novelist Jules Verne wrote "Journey to the Center of the Earth," but reality has yet to catch up with that science fiction adventure. While humans can't bore a path to our planet's metallic core, NASA has its sights set on visiting a giant asteroid that may be the frozen remains of the molten core of a bygone world.

Called Psyche, this asteroid orbits the Sun in the main asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. Using data gathered from Earth-based radar and optical telescopes, scientists believe that Psyche is made largely of metal. It could be part or all of the iron-rich interior of an early planetary building block that was stripped of its outer rocky shell as it repeatedly collided with other large bodies during the early formation of the solar system.

The asteroid, which is about 173 miles (280 kilometers) at its widest point, could also be something else. It could be the leftover piece of a completely different kind of iron-rich body that formed from metal-rich material somewhere in the solar system.

Psyche's multispectral imager, in the process of assembly and testing on September 13, 2021, at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, California. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

NASA's Psyche mission hopes to find out. Set for an August 2022 launch, the spacecraft will for two years orbit the asteroid it was named after, taking pictures, mapping the surface, and looking for evidence of an ancient magnetic field. Psyche also will study the neutrons and gamma rays coming from the asteroid's surface to help determine its elemental composition.

The first mission to explore an asteroid with a surface that contains substantial amounts of metal rather than rock or ice, Psyche seeks to better understand iron cores, an unexplored building block of planet formation. The mission also potentially provides the first opportunity to directly examine the inside of a rocky planet by offering a look at the interior of a previously layered planetary body that otherwise could never be seen. What scientists learn could shed additional light on how Earth and other rocky planets formed.

"There are a lot of basic questions about Psyche that are unanswered," said the mission's principal investigator, Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University. "And with every detail that gets added from data we can collect from Earth, it just becomes harder to make a sensible story. We really don't know what we're going to see until we visit, and we're going to be surprised."

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California integrate the magnetometer instrument into the agency's Psyche spacecraft on June 28, 2021. The instrument will help determine if the Psyche asteroid is part of a planetesimal. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

For instance, previous ground-based observations led scientists to believe that the asteroid was as much as 90% metal. Recent research led by Elkins-Tanton used updated density measurements to estimate that the asteroid is more likely between 30% and 60% metal

And scientists are puzzled why Psyche appears to be low in iron oxides, which are chemical compounds made of iron and oxygen. Mars, Mercury, Venus, and Earth all have them. "So if we're correct that Psyche is a mixture of metal and rock, and the rock has very little iron oxide, then there's got to be a strange story about how it was created—because it doesn't fit the standard stories of planetary creations," Elkins-Tanton said.

Mystery of Psyche

Scientists also don't know where Psyche formed. It might have originated inside the main asteroid belt, but it's also possible that it was born in the same zone as the inner planets like Earth—or in outer solar system, where giant planets like Jupiter now reside. Neither origin story follows a simple path to where Psyche lives now, 280 million miles (450 million kilometers) from the Sun.

Asteroids in general can offer insight into planet formation and how the early solar system worked 4.6 billion years ago. But Psyche is particularly interesting to scientists because of how unusual it is, with its metal content, high density, and low concentration of iron oxides.

"The fact that it's so unusual is telling us a new story that we haven't seen before about how asteroids evolved," said Bill Bottke, Psyche mission scientist of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "That's a piece of the story we don't have right now. By getting that piece together with all the others we have, we continue to refine our story of how the solar system formed and evolved early on."

Tools of the Trade

To help figure out the asteroid's origins, the mission's science investigation will rely on a magnetometer, a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer, and a multispectral imager. Scientists know that the asteroid doesn't generate a magnetic field the way Earth does, but if Psyche had a magnetic field in the past, it could still be recorded in the asteroid's material today. With sensors mounted onto a 6-foot (2-meter) boom, the magnetometer can determine whether Psyche is still magnetized. If so, that would confirm that the asteroid is part of the core of an early planetesimal, the building block of an early planet.

This illustration depicts NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, set to launch in August 2022. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

The orbiter's gamma ray and neutron spectrometer instrument will help scientists determine the asteroid's chemical elements. As cosmic rays and high-energy particles impact Psyche's surface, the elements that make up the surface material absorb the energy. The neutrons and gamma rays they emit in response can be detected by the spectrometer, allowing scientists to match their properties to those emitted by known elements to determine what Psyche is made of.

Meanwhile, a pair of color cameras make up the multispectral imager. The imager is sensitive to light just beyond what humans can see, using filters in the ultraviolet and near-infrared wavelengths. The light reflected in these filters could help determine the mineralogy of any rocky material that may exist on Psyche's surface.

The spacecraft's telecommunications system will help with the science as well. The X-band radio system is primarily used to send commands to the spacecraft and receive engineering and science data from it. But scientists can also analyze subtle changes in these radio waves to measure the body's rotation, wobble, mass, and gravity field, providing additional clues about the composition and structure of Psyche's interior.

Eyes on Psyche

But before any of this science analysis gets underway, there will be pictures. By late 2025, three years after launch, Psyche will be within sight of the asteroid, and the imager team will be on high alert.

"Even before we get into orbit, we'll start getting much better pictures than we can from telescopes on Earth. We'll start to resolve features, see big craters, crater basins—maybe mountain ranges. Who knows what we'll see?" said Jim Bell of Arizona State University, deputy principal investigator of Psyche and imager team lead. "All we know is that the reality of Psyche is going to be even weirder and more beautiful than we can imagine."'Mini psyches' give insights into mysterious metal-rich near-Earth asteroids

More information: L. T. Elkins‐Tanton et al, Observations, Meteorites, and Models: A Preflight Assessment of the Composition and Formation of (16) Psyche, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets (2020). DOI: 10.1029/2019JE006296

NASA's Psyche mission: www.nasa.gov/psyche

Journal information: Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets 

Provided by Jet Propulsion Laboratory 

NASA's $985 million Psyche mission to all-metal asteroid nears liftoff

Stefano Coledan
Mon, August 14, 2023 

NASA's Psyche satellite sits at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility in Titusville, Fla., not far from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday. The spacecraft is being prepared for launch Oct. 5 and will fly on a six-year journey to explore the metal rich 16 Psyche asteroid. Photo by Joe Marino/UPI


CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Aug. 14 (UPI) -- Preparations are proceeding for the early October launch of a NASA orbiter that uses futuristic electric propulsion technology for a rendezvous with 16 Psyche, the heart of a demolished planet believed to be made almost entirely of iron.

Named after its interplanetary target, the $985 million mission is intended to help scientists determine whether the 140-mile-wide asteroid -- which varies between 235 million and 309 million miles away -- formed like Earth.

The Psyche spacecraft, at 10 feet-by-8 feet, is scheduled to lift off Oct. 5 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. That will accelerate the probe to the speed it needs to escape the gravity wells of Earth and the sun.

Then, the sophisticated space probe will start one of its four Hall-effect thrusters to accelerate toward its final destination.

Called ion propulsion, its technology involves using solar electrical power to generate electromagnetic fields for charged xenon gas.

Members of the media are given an opportunity to view the NASA Psyche satellite at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility in Titusville, Fla. Photo by Joe Marino/UPI

Essentially, the electricity from the solar panels is used to convert the xenon gas to xenon ions, which are expelled to provide a very low thrust. The engines will run one at a time, for two years.

Psyche's mission was originally scheduled to launch in October 2022, but was delayed by flight software issues. That software recently passed muster and has been installed onto Psyche's systems.

The principal Investigator for the Psyche program, Lindy Elkins-Tanton, from the University of Arizona, provides an update on the NASA Psyche mission at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility in Titusville, Fla. Photo by Joe Marino/UPI

JPL manages mission

Led by Arizona State University. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is responsible for mission management, operations and navigation.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory plans to send the Psyche spacecraft, to a distant metallic asteroid. Image courtesy of NASA/SSL Maxar Technologies

The spacecraft's solar-electric propulsion chassis was built by Maxar, with a payload that includes an imager, magnetometer and a gamma-ray spectrometer.

As part of its mission, Psyche will gather topographical and chemical composition data, looking for evidence of a magnetic field. Planetologists believe Psyche may still have one.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory plans to send the Psyche spacecraft to a distant metallic asteroid, 16 Psyche, shown in an illustration. Image courtesy of NASA

The most important mission goal is to establish how planets like Earth could be the result of overwhelming numbers of primordial matter collisions and debris accumulation over eons.

NASA officials were so excited by Psyche's prospects that they showed off the spacecraft last week at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility in Titusville, Fla., not far from the space center.

Scientists explained to lay observers the importance of the mission.

"All of the planets were formed in the flash of a second and it was a very chaotic period," said JPL's Henry Stone, manager of the systems engineering section. "We cannot drill down and study the core of the Earth."

Finding a body such as 16 Psyche, still in those primeval conditions would validate scientific hypotheses about the birth of the solar system, Stone said.

The asteroid was discovered on March 17, 1852, by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis, a professor of astronomy at Naples University. It was named after the Greek god Psyche.

For decades, dynamic models and hypotheses predicted that in the solar system's creation, one or two planetoid cores crumbled and separated from their rocky mantels, as Psyche likely did.

Validation of model

"If we determine that that was the case, then we can conclude that, yes, that theoretical model of that early start of the solar system is now validated," Stone said. "The presence of a magnetic core and a magnetic field is what makes life possible on Earth."

But there is more than cosmological learning involved in this research, said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche principal investigator from the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University at Tempe.

"If you can get a measurement of Psyche, then you got the original material in its original state, and then many, many of those Psyches make added up to make our Earth," Elkins-Tanton said.

"We know something about the composition of our Earth's core from remote sensing, and I think it should be a little bit different from the composition of Psyche," she said.

"Getting from one to the other is going to tell us about the process that led from no planet to planet."

It is a fundamental question about all solar systems, Elkins-Tanton said. "How do you create a habitable planet and what happens for one to become inhabitable?"

Once in Mars' vicinity, Psyche will get a so-called gravity assist that will hurl it toward the asteroid belt -- halfway between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter -- to the encounter 16Psyche. By then, it will be August 2029.

The spacecraft will go into orbit around 16 Psyche, along a descending path, 435 miles above the surface. In this initial phase, it will spend two months mapping the asteroid's surface and looking for evidence of a magnetic field.

Determining the size

At this stage, the mission will be essential for scientists to determine the size of the asteroid -- some sort of asymmetric potato, as Elkins-Tanton described it.

Gradually, Psyche will lower its orbit to 180 miles from the surface, performing topography observations, looking for evidence of a magnetic field that may have survived Psyche's demise.

The spacecraft will descend to 110 miles from the surface to perform gravitational studies. Finally, the probe will lower to its final orbit, 53 miles from the surface, to establish its chemical composition via gamma-ray and neutron spectrometers, collect images and gravity readings, and search for magnetic fields, of course.

The whole mission circling 16 Psyche is expected to last 21 months.

One ride-along experiment will test advanced laser-based communications techniques. Called Deep Space Optical Communications, the equipment will carry massive amounts of information.

This innovative technology will be vital during human exploration missions to Mars, said Abhijit Biswas, the DSOC Program system engineer at JPL.

"We need to keep updating our technology so we can enable future science missions with high-resolution data," Biswas said. "To do that, we need faster communications; we need lasers.

"You may recall the days when we used dial-up modems to go online. From that, look at us today. We have high-speed connections, we can stream videos and multiple feeds," he said.

"For outer space, we want to have virtual presence, and to do that we need faster, laser beam communications that will help us achieve that."

NASA Tests the First Rocket to Launch From the Surface of Another Planet

Passant Rabie
Mon, August 14, 2023 

A development motor based on the second-stage solid rocket motor design for NASA’s Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) undergoes testing on March 29 at Northrop Grumman’s facility in Elkton, Maryland.

NASA’s Perseverance rover has been diligently collecting rocky samples from Mars to stow them away on the planet’s dusty surface while engineers work to develop a rocket that can launch off of another world as a crucial step in the process of retrieving the samples.

The team behind the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) recently tested its first and second stage solid rocket motors in a vacuum chamber that simulated the cold temperatures on the Red Planet, according to NASA.

“This test demonstrates our nation has the capacity to develop a launch vehicle that can successfully be lightweight enough to get to Mars and robust enough to put a set of samples into orbit to bring back to Earth,” Benjamin Davis, MAV propulsion manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, said in a statement. “The hardware is telling us that our technology is ready to proceed with development.”

Mars Sample Return is one of the most complex missions to be carried out by NASA. It involves a fleet of spacecraft, including an orbiter, lander, two helicopters, and the first rocket to launch from the surface of another planet.

MAV is a two-stage rocket with two solid rocket motors – SRM1 and SRM2. SRM1 will propel MAV away from the surface of Mars, while SRM2 will spin the rocket’s second stage to place a container with the samples in orbit around Mars so that it can be picked up by the Earth Return Orbiter.

In order to test MAV, the team prepared development motors that will help them adjust their designs before they start building the real thing. The SRM2 development motor was tested on March 29 at the Northrop Grumman facility while SRM1 was tested on April 7 at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

NASA Mars Ascent Vehicle Continues Progress Toward Mars Sample Return

SRM1 was placed in a vacuum chamber with temperatures of -4 degrees Fahrenheit (-20 degrees Celsius) to simulate conditions on Mars. For the rocket motor to survive the extreme cold, the team had to outfit it with a trapped ball nozzle with a supersonic split line as opposed to a regular gimballing solid rocket motor nozzle, which isn’t designed for the Martian climate. Nozzles are specially-shaped tubes through which hot gases flow, and they are used as part of rocket engines to produce thrust by accelerating hot exhaust.

During the test, the supersonic splitline nozzle achieved the sixth of nine technology readiness levels based on a scale developed by NASA. The new nozzle design will still undergo more testing to, “make sure it can handle the intense shaking and vibration of launch, the near vacuum of space, and the extreme heat and cold expected during MAV’s trip,” according to NASA.

The Mars samples are expected to arrive to Earth in the early 2030s, although the mission is under scrutiny after going over budget and facing possible delays. A Senate subcommittee recently threatened to cancel the mission altogether if NASA does not submit a year-by-year funding profile for Mars Sample Return within the $5.3 billion lifecycle cost outlined in the 2022 planetary science Decadal Survey.

 Gizmodo

Astronomers Spot a Massive Brown Dwarf Hotter Than the Sun

Isaac Schultz
Mon, August 14, 2023 

An artist's impression of a brown dwarf (foreground) orbiting a white dwarf

 (background, at left).

An artist’s impression of a brown dwarf (foreground) orbiting a white dwarf (background, at left).

Astronomers recently spotted one of the most massive brown dwarfs known, an object between 75 and 90 times the mass of Jupiter with a beyond-scalding dayside temperature of 8,000 K (13,940° Fahrenheit.)

For comparison, the Sun’s surface is a mere 5,772 K (9,930° Fahrenheit). Astronomers observed the piping hot, supersized brown dwarf in 2019 and 2020 using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. Their findings were published today in Nature Astronomy.

Brown dwarfs sit at the awkward in-between that separates planets from stars. The objects are larger than gas giants like Jupiter, but teenier than small stars. Because brown dwarfs fall short of the masses necessary for stars to burn hydrogen for their nuclear fusion, the objects are sometimes called failed stars.

The recent research team took a more respectful approach, calling the object (WD 0032-317B) an “irradiated-Jupiter analogue.” The dwarf orbits a white dwarf star that sits 1,406 light-years from Earth. The astronomical team posits that the brown dwarf was in a gas envelope with its partner white dwarf until about one million years ago.

Its high temperature is something to appreciate because brown dwarfs are generally the coolest, dimmest objects on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram that maps stars’ luminosities and effective temperatures.

The dwarf is tidally locked, meaning that its scalding dayside always faces the white dwarf, which has a surface temperature of about 37,000 K (66,140° Fahrenheit). The brown dwarf’s nightside temperature is much cooler than its star-facing side, hovering around 2,000 K (1,727° Fahrenheit.)

Comparing brown dwarfs to hot Jupiters—gas giant exoplanets that orbit their host stars closely, making them piping hot—is not new. It was proven more apt than previously realized in 2021, when astronomers found evidence of stripes and polar storms like those seen on Jupiter on brown dwarfs. But the dwarfs can also be cooler than the boiling point of water; the coldest-known brown dwarf has a frigid temperature of -10° Fahrenheit, indicating to some that it’s not a brown dwarf at all, but a rogue exoplanet.

Spotting more brown dwarfs may clarify the diversity and nature of these hot, massive objects. A new paper hosted on the preprint server arXiv describes a brown dwarf with an astoundingly quick orbit of just two hours. The dwarf was spotted by the Zwicky Transient Facility and has a mass 80 times that of Jupiter, with an effective temperature of about 1,691 K (2,584° Fahrenheit)—quite cool compared to WD 0032-317B.

Last week, a different team of astronomers published a captivating GIF of an exoplanet’s orbit. The exoplanet could be imaged because it was “at the boundary of a planet and a brown dwarf,” according to study author and Northwestern astronomer Jason Wang.

Perhaps astronomers will apply the same technique to brown dwarfs in the future, to better understand the systems the dwarfs occupy. Or, astronomers could train the Webb Space Telescope’s perceptive gaze on these irradiated-Jupiter analogues, as they’ve done before with fainter, more distant, colder dwarfs than WD 0032-317B.

More: A Trio of Extreme Brown Dwarfs Have Been Found Spinning at Their Physical Limits

 Gizmodo

Researcher Proposes Space Umbrella Attached to Asteroid to Mitigate Climate Change

Angely Mercado
Mon, August 14, 2023 

The shield attached to an asteroid, hanging out in our solar system.

The solution for protecting the planet from some of the sun’s rays could be a space “umbrella.” A study published the scientific journal PNAS in June outlines a University of Hawai’i researcher’s plan for hitching an umbrella or shield onto an asteroid to block some of the sun’s rays.

István Szapudi, an astronomer at the University of Hawai’i’s Institute for Astronomy, explained in the study that a shield attached to an asteroid could be developed in the future to mitigate climate change. According to the study, this could shield the planet from 1.7% of sun rays, which could slow down planetary warming.

“In Hawaiʻi, many use an umbrella to block the sunlight as they walk about during the day. I was thinking, could we do the same for Earth and thereby mitigate the impending catastrophe of climate change?” Szapudi said in a press release.

During a call with Earther, Szapudi described the asteroid umbrella like kite surfing. Instead of wind, the force that moves the sail will be the radiation from the sun that hits the shield and transfers enough momentum to move it. Though it catches the imaginatin, Szapudi’s idea isn’t possible just yet. Our current rockets cannot exert enough force to carry a large shield out into our solar system. If a method for doing this becomes possible in a few decades, then this theory could maybe, possibly, theoretically, become a realistic climate solution.

Szapudi told Earther that the paper released at the end of July could be the start of future innovation. He thinks following research could include working with asteroid experts to identify asteroids that could be manipulated to move around the Earth and block sunlight.

According to Szapudi, another factor in making his idea a reality is creating simulations of the sun shield. Future research would have to be conducted to calculate how the shield could be manufactured and assembled, how it would get into outer space, and if parts of the shielf would have to be assembled in space.

“I want to see whether there is a simple cost effective way [to do this],” he told Earther. “It’s just the very first step in a big journey,” he said.

Many other climate change mitigation geoengineering projects have been proposed, and some of these suggestions have also involved outer space. Last year, a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced an idea that included sending a huge raft of “bubbles” into outer space. The raft would be positioned between the Earth and the Sun. Theoretically, it would be big enough to deflect sunlight away from the planet to slow down some of our global warming.

Other proposed space ideas are a little scarier. Just this year, a group of researchers at Harvard and the University of Utah proposed a solution to shoot millions of tons of moon dust into Earth’s orbit. The dust would be enough to block out the Sun’s rays. But like the solution suggested in the study from the University of Hawai’i, these other geoengineering solutions are still theoretical. Technology would need to advance in order for these solutions to become possible one day.

Szapudi emphasized that geoengineering ideas, like the sun shield attached to an asteroid, are one part of mitigating the climate crisis. “We probably have to do a number of things to mitigate climate change, and this might be one of them,” he said. “Every solution needs to be explored.”

 Gizmodo

The space industry is starting a green revolution

Martin Coates
Sun, August 13, 2023 

Image Credits: sbayram (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Rocket launches are nothing short of spectacular. Whether we grew up in the Apollo era, the space shuttle era or the private space era, most of us can easily bring to mind a rocket launch with the roar of its engines, jets of fire and trails of smoke. That image is burned into the consciousness of nearly everyone on planet Earth with access to TV or internet.

But, until recently, few people considered that those spectacular launches might be leaving an awful lot of pollution in its wake. As it turns out, the space travel industry, with its several dozen launches per year, is responsible for the same amount of carbon emissions as the global aviation industry. With the commercial space industry maturing at a rapid pace, we are seeing a steady increase in the number of rocket launches every year. So, the scale of the problem is only going to grow.

The space travel industry is responsible for the same amount of carbon emissions as the global aviation industry.

In May 2022, two scientists from the University of Nicosia in Cyprus, Ioannis Kokkinakis and Dimitris Drikakis, sought to quantify the potential impact in a study that appeared in the Physics of Fluids journal. They sought to measure the potential health and climate risks by blending rocket launch data with computer simulations.

The conclusion they reached was that “pollution from rockets should not be underestimated as frequent future rocket launches could have a significant cumulative effect on climate,” and may also become “hazardous to human health.”

In the simulations, the scientists used data based on the standard rocket fuel RP-1. And therein lies one of the biggest problems that the space launch industry needs to tackle. RP-1 (alternatively, Rocket Propellant-1 or Refined Petroleum-1) is a highly refined form of kerosene that has been the standard rocket fuel used for decades. Unfortunately, RP-1 is not and never has been a clean-burning fuel. A launch using RP-1 or similar kerosene-based fuel creates many tons of CO2, as well as particulates in the atmosphere called black carbon, commonly known as soot.

However, it is not all doom and gloom. It is early days, admittedly, but it is safe to say there is a green revolution starting in the space launch industry. Positive signs are starting to appear across the global space industry and it appears to be gathering steam.

It is starting with a rethink about the fuels that are being utilized. Three emerging rocket launch companies, two in Europe and one in the U.S., have decided to build their rockets around a very different, yet very familiar fuel — propane. Strange as it may seem, what most people think of as camping gas might be a saving grace for the global space launch industry.

Propane has qualities that make it a very sustainable fuel. First, it is very clean-burning, meaning that black carbon is not left in the atmosphere. Second, its carbon footprint is minimal compared to RP-1. A study from the University of Exeter concluded that a "microlauncher" rocket using the renewable form of propane — bio-propane — could reduce CO2 emissions by up to 96% compared to other similarly sized rockets.

One spaceport currently being built in Scotland, Sutherland Spaceport, is also taking a stand on environmental sustainability. The developers of that spaceport aim to make it the first carbon-neutral spaceport globally — both in its construction and its operation. One illustration of what that means practically is how the developers plan to reuse the peat lifted from the construction to repair the peat "scars" in the landscape nearby, created by decades of harvesting peat for fuel.

Another hopeful sign from the space industry comes from the European Space Agency (ESA). They recently commissioned a study called “Ultra-Green Launch & Space Transportation Systems.” Although this is a long-term play, as it is looking for solutions to be exploited in the period 2030–2050, the fact that a major space agency is studying the issue is a positive sign of the direction that the global space industry in taking.

There is positive momentum, too, from the European Space Agency, through their leadership in tackling the issue of space debris or space junk. Anyone who has seen the movie Wall-E can picture what that might look like from space and feel a little collective shame at how humanity has reached this situation. It is thought that there are now millions of fragments of space junk in Earth’s orbit. However, one of the most comforting aspects of ESA’s leadership in this sphere is how they are actively putting resources into projects that will seek to actively remove debris, leaving our planet’s orbit cleaner and more accessible.

Five to ten years ago, you would have struggled to find anyone, anywhere connecting the words "sustainability" and "space." That is changing, and rightly so. But this is not the time to sit back and think that everything will be fine. If the space industry is to flourish in the 21st-century, sustainability will need to become a core part of its ethos.

What may begin with polite applause from the periphery for sustainability initiatives will no doubt lead to financial disincentives and eventually legislation. Even if most people are excited and inspired by rocket launches, the space industry is unlikely to get a free pass for much longer.

 

NASA's Psyche mission to a metal world may reveal the mysteries of Earth's interior

by Jim Bell, The Conversation

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

French novelist Jules Verne delighted 19th-century readers with the tantalizing notion that a journey to the center of the Earth was actually plausible.

Since then, scientists have long acknowledged that Verne's literary journey was only science fiction. The extreme temperatures of the Earth's interior—around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,537 Celsius) at the core—and the accompanying crushing pressure, which is millions of times more than at the surface, prevent people from venturing down very far.

Still, there are a few things known about the Earth's interior. For example, geophysicists discovered that the core consists of a solid sphere of iron and nickel that comprises 20% of the Earth's radius, surrounded by a shell of molten iron and nickel that spans an additional 15% of Earth's radius.

That, and the rest of our knowledge about our world's interior, was learned indirectly—either by studying Earth's magnetic field or the way earthquake waves bounce off different layers below the Earth's surface.

But indirect discovery has its limitations. How can scientists find out more about our planet's deep interior?

Planetary scientists like me think the best way to learn about inner Earth is in outer space. NASA's robotic mission to a metal world is scheduled for liftoff on Oct. 5, 2023. That mission, the spacecraft traveling there, and the world it will explore all have the same name—Psyche. And for six years now, I've been part of NASA's Psyche team.

Credit: The Conversation

About the asteroid Psyche

Asteroids are small worlds, with some the size of small cities and others as large as small countries. They are the leftover building blocks from our solar system's early and violent period, a time of planetary formation.

Although most are rocky, icy or a combination of both, perhaps 20% of asteroids are worlds made of metal, and similar in composition to the Earth's core. So it's tempting to imagine that these metallic asteroids are pieces of the cores of once-existing planets, ripped apart by ancient cosmic collisions with each other. Maybe, by studying these pieces, scientists could find out directly what a planetary core is like.

Psyche is the largest-known of the metallic asteroids. Discovered in 1852, Psyche has the width of Massachusetts, a squashed spherical shape reminiscent of a pincushion, and an orbit between Mars and Jupiter in the main asteroid belt. An amateur astronomer can see Psyche with a backyard telescope, but it appears only as a pinpoint of light.

About the Psyche mission

In early 2017, NASA approved the US$1 billion mission to Psyche. To do its work, there's no need for the uncrewed spacecraft to land—instead, it will orbit the asteroid repeatedly and methodically, starting from 435 miles (700 kilometers) out and then going down to 46 miles (75 km) from the surface, and perhaps even lower.

An artist’s rendition of Psyche, a spectacular metallic world.

Once it arrives in August 2029, the probe will spend 26 months mapping the asteroid's geology, topography and gravity; it will search for evidence of a magnetic field; and it will compare the asteroid's composition with what scientists know, or think we know, about Earth's core.

The central questions are these: Is Psyche really an exposed planetary core? Is the asteroid one big bedrock boulder, a rubble pile of smaller boulders, or something else entirely? Are there clues that the previous outer layers of this small world—the crust and mantle—were violently stripped away long ago? And maybe the most critical question: Can what we learn about Psyche be extrapolated to solve some of the mysteries about the Earth's core?

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, undergoing final tests in a clean room at a facility near Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux

About the spacecraft Psyche

The probe's body is about the same size and mass as a large SUV. Solar panels, stretching a bit wider than a tennis court, power the cameras, spectrometers and other systems.

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will take Psyche off the Earth. The rest of the way, Psyche will rely on ion propulsion—the gentle pressure of ionized xenon gas jetting out of a nozzle provides a continuous, reliable and low-cost way to propel spacecraft out into the solar system.

The journey, a slow spiral of 2.5 billion miles (4 billion km) that includes a gravity-assist flyby past Mars, will take nearly six years. Throughout the cruise, the Psyche team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and here at Arizona State University in Tempe, will stay in regular contact with the spacecraft. Our team will send and receive data using NASA's Deep Space Network of giant radio antennas.

Even if we learn that Psyche is not an ancient planetary core, we're bound to significantly add to our body of knowledge about the solar system and the way planets form. After all, Psyche is still unlike any world humans have ever visited. Maybe we can't yet journey to the center of the Earth, but robotic avatars to places like Psyche can help unlock the mysteries hidden deep inside the planets—including our own.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Huge solar arrays permanently installed on NASA's Psyche spacecraft

NASA might cancel mission to massive ‘gold mine asteroid’ — here’s why it shouldn’t

BY MARK R. WHITTINGTON, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 08/14/22 
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

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NASA had planned to send a probe to the asteroid 16 Psyche in 2022. It is sometimes called “the golden asteroid” because many people believe it contains an abundance of valuable metals. Unfortunately, NASA recently announced a launch delay because of the need to review software. The probe may launch in 2023 or 2024 to arrive at 16 Psyche in 2029 or 2030, respectively. The mission may be canceled altogether since the delay would cause further cost.

Regardless of the extra cost, the mission to 16 Psyche should proceed as soon as possible for two reasons: scientific and commercial.

According to NASA, scientists believe that the asteroid may be “the partial core of a shattered planetesimal — a small world the size of a city or small country that is the first building block of a planet. If it is, asteroid Psyche can offer a close look at the interior of terrestrial planets like Earth that is normally hidden beneath layers of mantle and crust.” In other words, by studying 16 Psyche close up, scientists will be able to uncover insights about other rocky worlds, including Earth.

The second case for proceeding with the mission is commercial, presuming 16 Psyche is a treasure trove of metals and other resources that would be useful for maintaining technological civilization here on Earth. Here, however, the case is a little more complicated, thanks to recent scientific studies.

Until recently, scientists thought that 16 Psyche was a solid hunk of metal, iron, nickel, gold and platinum. A recent article in Smithsonian suggested that the market price of the asteroid’s metals is $10 quintillion, hence the name “golden asteroid.” Other estimates have gone as high as $700 quintillion.

According to Interesting Engineering, a recent paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research has cast some doubt in the original model of 16 Psyche as a giant hunk of metal. The original model was derived from the amount of light reflected off of the asteroid. However, scientists from Purdue University and Brown University suggest, using measurements of the interaction between 16 Psyche and other nearby space objects, that the “golden asteroid” is less dense than previously believed.

The authors of the study suggest that 16 Psyche is actually a rocky object covered with a layer of metal that has welled up over billions of years from volcanic activity. Some scientists have therefore marked down the market value of the metal on 16 Psyche to about $11.65 trillion, still a considerable amount but not as eye-popping as previous estimates.

The conflicting evaluations of just what 16 Psyche is further make the case for sending a probe to orbit the asteroid and to characterize its surface and composition. Not only would scientists be able to gain insights into the formation of planets, but potential asteroid miners would be able to evaluate 16 Psyche for future resource extraction.

The probe that NASA has planned to send to 16 Psyche will contain several instruments that can uncover the asteroid’s secrets. These include a multispectral imager, a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer, a magnetometer, and an X-band gravity science investigation instrument, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

If 16 Psyche is worth mining, when could such operations proceed? Citigroup thinks that space mining, including from the moon and asteroids, will be a $100 billion-per-year business by 2040. Launch costs will continue to decrease and experience in operating in space will continue to expand until such a business makes economic sense.

How would one mine 16 Psyche? One could imagine a SpaceX Starship being dispatched to the asteroid, going into orbit around it and then sending mining robots to its surface. The robots would mine valuable minerals and then bring them back to the orbiting Starship. The SpaceX rocket ship would be able to carry as much as 100 metric tons of ore to facilities in low-Earth orbit for processing and to use as raw materials to manufacture products. Alternatively, mining 16 Psyche and other asteroids would supply SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s dreamed-of Mars settlement.

Space mining will be a new, lucrative business for the 21st century. Sixteen Psyche could be a space equivalent of El Dorado for that enterprise.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of space exploration studies “Why Is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? and “The Moon, Mars and Beyond.”

New mission to metal-rich asteroid Psyche has scientists 'psyched'

CBC
Mon, October 9, 2023 

This illustration depicts NASA's Psyche spacecraft. Set to launch Oct. 12, the Psyche mission will explore a metal-rich asteroid of the same name that lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU - image credit)

Hot on the heels of the sample–return mission from an asteroid named Bennu, NASA is preparing to launch a spacecraft to yet another asteroid.

The Psyche mission — named after the asteroid it's planning to study — is set to blast off on Thursday atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., where it will begin a six-year journey to its home in the asteroid belt.

Once it arrives, it will continue to orbit Psyche for two years, where it will study things such as its composition, age and topography.

So why is NASA heading to yet another asteroid?

As always, to better understand Earth.

Earth is made up of three layers: The crust, the mantle and the core. But because the core lies so deep within the planet, we know virtually nothing about it.

But out in the asteroid belt, home to a million objects or more, all left over from the formation of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago, may lie clues in the form of metal-rich asteroids. And Psyche is just one of those objects.

To date, astronomers have only been able to get information about the asteroid, offically named 16 Psyche, from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the now-retired airborne Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) telescope.

But from that they've learned that the 280–kilometre wide, potato-shaped asteroid is likely metal-rich, unlike any asteroid we've ever visited.

"We have probably two million or more objects in our solar system," said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, principal investigator of the Psyche mission. "We get kind of focused on the big planets, but there's an awful lot more of these smaller objects. And they come in all different flavours and types. And they tell us different parts of the solar system story."

In particular, scientists want to understand how the cores of rocky planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars formed and what they might look like.

"If you want to find out about metal cores, this is our very best bet," said Elkins-Tanton, who is also a professor at Arizona State University's school of Earth and space exploration.

"Because we cannot go to the cores of any of our rocky planets — way too hot, way too much pressure — but they make these magnetic fields that keep our atmosphere safe and give us guidance and have a really important aspect of habitability."

There are two leading theories as to how Psyche formed. One, is that it was in the stage of potentially forming as a planet, called a planetesimal, but another body slammed into it, stripping away its upper crust leaving behind a metal core.

Another theory is that it was left over from the formation of our solar system and migrated outwards from the sun where it now resides in the asteroid belt.

But scientists may be wrong about both theories.

"Psyche is so cool, because we still don't really know what it is," said Zoe Landsman, a research scientist at the University of Central Florida, and chief scientist at the Center for Lunar and Asteroid Surface Science (CLASS).

Though not involved in the mission, Landsman has studied Psyche in depth and is excited about what surprises may lie in store with this mission. Psyche may not even look like we think it does.

"There's really nothing that beats actually sending a spacecraft to the object. And I think every single time that we've gone to a new world, there's something that completely subverts our expectations, and you learn something tremendously valuable about the solar system."

Worth $10,000 quadrillion

In 2017, Elkins-Tanton calculated just how much Psyche might be worth, coming in at a whopping $10,000 quadrillion USD, should we ever have the resources to mine it.

But, she noted while speaking with CBC, there are some caveats.

"We have no technology for bringing Psyche back to Earth. There isn't any way to do that. And then if we did, it would probably be a really bad day on Earth, because we also have no technology for putting it into a stable orbit," she said. And then, even if we could do that, we would have flooded the market and it would be worth nothing."

While space mining may seem like science fiction, such as seen in the cult-favourite book and television series The Expanse, scientists imagine it happening one day.

Space mining is certainly something currently discussed in the space industry — there's even a newly formed Canadian Space Mining Corporation, though many space mining companies have come and gone.

This artist's illustration depicts Psyche, a metal-rich asteroid that resides in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

This artist's illustration depicts Psyche, a metal-rich asteroid that resides in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)

"I do think that we could have people mining in the asteroid belt," Elkins-Tanton said. "In a lot of weird ways that is a plausible future."

Gordon Osinski, a planetary geologist at Western University in London, Ont., who is not involved in the Psyche mission, but who is the principal investigator for Canada's first lunar rover, agreed, though he wonders about the timing.

"I think it's inevitable," he said. "It's a question of when. I think it will happen on the moon first, because of its proximity, and it will be water." Specifically, he said, the mining of resources in situ, or in the place you are visiting, would be practically necessary in order to build bases on planets or moons.

He also noted that Natural Resources Canada mentioned the future of space mining it a recent report titled The Canadian Minerals and Metals Plan.

However, he believes the mining of asteroids is much further away, but there could be a lot of good reasons to try, including the mining of valuable platinum group elements, or PGEs, which are used in such things as batteries, solar panels, and even pacemakers and magnets.

But no matter what the future holds in terms of further space exploration and mining opportunities, Elkins-Tanton said she's pumped about the upcoming mission, but she'll feel better once it's safely on its way to the asteroid

"I'm totally psyched about Psyche," she said. "And I hope that everyone is psyched about Psyche. It's been really fun to get so much support from around the world. People are very intrigued by this mission."