U.S. launches first mission to explore metal-rich asteroid

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 13 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched its Psyche mission on Friday, the first-ever U.S. mission to study a metal-rich asteroid.

The Psyche spacecraft lifted off at 10:19 a.m. Eastern Time Friday aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in the southeastern U.S. state of Florida.

Soon after the launch, the first and second stages of the Falcon Heavy center core separated. The side boosters from the Falcon Heavy landed successfully at SpaceX's landing zones at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, nearby Kennedy Space Center.

The spacecraft is on its roughly six-year journey to asteroid Psyche. The spacecraft will travel 3.5 billion kilometers to the metal-rich asteroid in the far reaches of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

If all goes as planned, asteroid Psyche's gravity will capture the spacecraft in late July 2029, and the spacecraft will begin its prime mission in August.

The spacecraft will spend about two years orbiting the asteroid to take pictures, map the surface, and collect data to determine asteroid Psyche's composition, according to NASA.

A technology demonstration called Deep Space Optical Communications flies on the Psyche spacecraft in order to test high-data-rate laser communications that could be used by future NASA missions.

The spacecraft has three science instruments to investigate the asteroid, including a magnetometer to look for evidence of an ancient magnetic field at Psyche; a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer to help determine the chemical elements that make up the asteroid; and a multispectral imager to provide information about the mineral composition and topography of Psyche.

Once the spacecraft reaches Psyche, it will spend about 26 months orbiting the asteroid, gathering images and other data that will tell scientists more about its history and what it is made of, according to NASA.

Psyche is also NASA's first scientific mission that was launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

The mission aims to help scientists learn more about the formation of rocky bodies in our solar system, according to NASA.

Asteroid Psyche was discovered by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis on March 17, 1852. It is a giant metal rich asteroid, about three times farther away from the Sun than is Earth. The asteroid has an irregular, potato-like shape, and its surface area is about 165,800 square kilometers.

Scientists think Psyche may consist of significant amounts of metal from the core of a planetesimal, one of the building blocks of our solar system. The asteroid is most likely a survivor of multiple violent hit-and-run collisions, common when the solar system was forming. Thus, Psyche may be able to tell how Earth's core and the cores of the other rocky, or terrestrial, planets came to be, according to NASA.