Oct. 13 (UPI) — NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, which will study a large asteroid, hopefully offering insight into the creation and composition of Earth and similar planets, lifted off Friday.
The mission launched Friday at 10:19 a.m. from Launch Complex 39A at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch vehicle.
About four minutes after launch the booster stage separated from the rest of the spacecraft.
The mission is designed to study the Psyche asteroid in our solar system’s asteroid belt which is located between Mars and Jupiter.
The spacecraft will carry a variety of instruments, including a multispectral imager to study the asteroid’s surface as well as a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer to detail its chemical composition.
The Psyche mission will also carry the Asteroid Deep Space Optical Communications experiment which researchers hope will help provide laser-based communications systems for future spacecraft.
“If all goes as planned, asteroid Psyche’s gravity will capture the spacecraft in late July 2029, and Psyche will begin its prime mission in August. It will spend about two years orbiting the asteroid to take pictures, map the surface, and collect data to determine Psyche’s composition,” NASA said in a post.
Scientists estimate that Psyche asteroid, which was first discovered in 1852, has a maximum width of about 173 miles and believe it could be composed of planetesimal, which NASA describes as “an early planetary building block.”
NASA hopes the mission will offer insight into the building blocks of planets like Earth because the composition of the Psyche asteroid could be similar to the composition of the Earth’s metal core.
“We can’t bore a path to Earth’s metal core — or the cores of the other rocky planets — so visiting Psyche could provide a one-of-a-kind window into the violent history of collisions and accumulation of matter that created planets like our own,” NASA said.
