SpaceX Falcon Heavy set for 1st NASA launch to explore mysterious asteroid Psyche
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — SpaceX’s powerhouse Falcon Heavy rocket has flown commercial satellites, secret Department of Defense payloads and Elon Musk’s Tesla roadster into space. Now NASA is banking on the rocket for the first time, aiming to send a probe named Psyche to an asteroid with the same name this week.
The rocket that has the power of three Falcon 9’s essentially strapped together first flew in 2019, sending Musk’s Tesla out to an orbit that took the car past Mars. That’s where the Psyche probe is headed as well. It’s set to lift off from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A as early as 10:16 a.m. Eastern time Thursday, although weather forecasts show only a 20% chance for good conditions. There are daily windows for launch until Oct. 23.
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The $700 million satellite managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory aims to unlock the asteroid Psyche’s secrets, which scientists suspect is metal-rich. It resides in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
“We think it is the core of what used to be a small planet,” said Sarah Noble, the mission’s program scientist with NASA’s Planetary Science Division. “Unlike other planets, where you would imagine that was made up of a core and a mantle and crust, just like Earth, but something happened that sort of ripped away most of the rock.”
The hypothesis is that this could be a mirror into what is essentially the beginning of every rocky planet in the galaxy.
“There’s no way to get to our core or any other core of any other planetary body,” she said. “So here’s one just sitting there in space waiting for us to go and explore it.”
It’s one of only nine known asteroids thought to be made of metal or with a metal surface, and that’s out of more than 1 million cataloged to date. Data have shown it likely has a nickel-iron core and has an average diameter of 140 miles, or roughly the drive from Daytona Beach to Tampa on Interstate 4, which keeps it among the top 20 largest known asteroids in the solar system and the largest metal one by far.
The asteroid was first discovered on March 17, 1852, by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis, named for the Greek goddess of the soul who in mythology was born human, but married the Greek god of love Eros, aka Cupid.
“This is really an adventure to the unknown, and it’s weird. It’s a weird asteroid, which scientists love,” Noble said.
