The main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is a good place to do a forensic study of the Solar System. The Solar System's early days can be found there. asteroids are mostly unaffected by space weathering out in the cold vacuum of space.
Space scientists refer to asteroids and meteorites as time capsule because of the evidence they have.
NASA is sending a team to investigate the asteroid Psyche.
A team of researchers combined observations of Psyche with a map of the asteroid's surface.
The asteroids are divided into three groups. The most common type of asteroid is carbonaceous. About 75 percent of known asteroids are made up of them. They are dark because of the carbon.
The second most common type is s-type asteroid. Most of the asteroids are made of iron and magnesium silicates.
About 8% of known asteroids are metal or M type. They are thought to be the source of iron meteorites that fall to Earth. One of the earliest sources of iron was the M-type meteorite.
Psyche is an M type asteroid. The dwarf planet is about 220 kilometers in diameter. 16 Psyche was the 16th minor planet found. Minor planets, like Psyche, are larger asteroids.
(NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)
Psyche has a lot of iron and nickel, which makes it a gold-mine asteroid. Nobody believes it's rich in gold.
There are visible light images of Psyche. Some pictures of the asteroid were taken by the European Southern Observatory's VLT.
Psyche's history is uncertain. Astronomers thought it was the iron core of a larger body. A powerful collision stripped the body of its crust and mantle.
The larger body would have been 500 km in diameter. The iron-rich core was the only thing left.
Astronomers continued to observe that idea as time went on. It wasn't dense enough to be a solid iron.
Psyche is thought to be a mixture of metals and silicates, but one study suggests that is not the case. There was a layer of carbon and other materials on Psyche's surface.
The most exotic idea is the ferro-volcanic idea. According to the study, Psyche was once molten. The molten core erupted as iron volcanoes when the outer layers cooled.
If you want to know what Psyche is, you have to look at it. That is what NASA is doing.
The mission will be launched in the fall of 2022. A gravity-assisted maneuver with Mars will allow the craft to arrive at Psyche.
It will take 21 months to study the asteroid and follow four different paths.
An illustration of the Psyche probe near the Psyche asteroid. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)
It will focus on different objectives as it approaches the asteroid.
A new map of Psyche's surface was created by a group of researchers.
There is a map in a paper. Saverio Cambioni is from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT.
The surface of Psyche is heterogeneous. These maps show that metal-rich asteroids are interesting enigmatic worlds. The Psyche mission will go to the asteroid.
The authors looked at 16 Psyche using the ALMA. ALMA is a radio telescope. The interferometer operates with a high resolution.
ALMA operates at a wavelength that is sensitive to Psyche's surface.
A synthetic signal that's equivalent to a telescope with a diameter of 10 miles can be created by combining the signals of the ALMA antenna. The bigger the telescope, the better.
The map is based on two different things. Thermal inertia is how long a material takes to get to the temperature of its environment. It takes more time because of higher thermal inertia.
The second is the same as the first. A material conducts heat, electricity, or sound with the help of the dielectric constant. A material with a low constant is a bad conductor and a good one.
The researchers ran hundreds of simulations to see which combinations of materials would explain thermal inertia. The simulations were run area by area to catch differences in surface properties.
Iron has a constant. The researchers were able to map the surface and find areas rich in iron. It is so dense that it has high thermal inertia.
A good idea of which surface regions are rich in iron and other metals is given by combining thermal inertia and dielectric constant measurement.
A feature on Psyche is called a curious feature. The region has a lower thermal inertia than the highlands. There is a depression just to the right of the asteroid's prime meridian.
The low elevation area has lower thermal inertia. The region is also bright on the radar. What is that? The researchers came up with a few options.
The lowlands could be metal rich but covered with porous regolith that lowers their thermal inertia compared to the highlands. There is an increase in thermal insturment with particle size. Regolith would have pooled in the lowlands.
Small asteroids, whose gravity is low enough for impacts to shake the surface and cause fine materials to pool, have ponds of fine- grained materials. Psyche is a large body, so if fine-grained materials accumulate on the bottom of the depression, this is intriguing.
The surface material is more porous in the lowlands. There is a decrease in thermal inertia as rock becomes more porous. The lowlands could be more porous due to impact Fractures.
The third hypothesis is that the lowlands have more silicate-rich materials than the highlands. The idea is that the depression could have been caused by an impact with a silicate-rich impactor.
The study shows that 16 Psyche's surface is made of many different materials. It adds to the evidence that the asteroid is rich in metal and silicates.
It is possible that the asteroid is a remnant of a differentiated body that has lost its mantle and crust.
The authors conclude that Psyche is a metal-rich asteroid with both metal and silicate materials.
Simone Marchi is a co- investigator on NASA's Psyche mission. Marchi commented on the study's importance in a press release. The data shows that Psyche's surface is heterogeneous. One of the main goals of the Psyche mission is to study the composition of the asteroid's surface using a variety of scientific instruments. The Psyche Science Team is eager to study more about the presence of Heterogeneities
NASA's Psyche mission will have to confirm these findings more thoroughly.
Sending a craft all the way to Psyche is more than just Psyche.
Psyche is the remnant core of a rocky, differentiated planet. Some of the light elements that we expect are in Earth's core will be contained in it. Earth's core is not dense enough to be pure. Scientists think it has lighter elements.
The Psyche mission will determine if the asteroid formed under more oxidizing or less reducing conditions. That will give us more information about the planets.
Psyche is often referred to as the Gold Mine Asteroid because of it's rich metal content. It is unlikely that the iron value of an object of its size will be realized or accessible in the near future.
16 Psyche is a gold mine if knowledge is as valuable as iron.
This article was published in the past. The original article is worth a read.
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