NASA Unveils Two New Missions To Study Truly Strange Asteroids (space.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: NASA's next low-cost planetary missions will attempt to unravel the mysteries of some seriously bizarre asteroids. The space agency has selected projects called Lucy and Psyche via its Discovery Program, which funds highly focused space missions to destinations throughout the solar system. The Lucy project will investigate the Trojan asteroids, which share an orbit with Jupiter, while Psyche will journey to the asteroid belt to study a huge, metallic asteroid named 16 Psyche that resides there. Lucy is scheduled to launch in October 2021. If all goes according to plan, the probe will visit an asteroid in the main asteroid belt -- located between Mars and Jupiter -- in 2025, and then go on to study six Trojan asteroids between 2027 and 2033, NASA officials said. There are two streams of Trojan asteroids. One trails Jupiter, and the other leads the giant planet around the sun. Scientists think both streams may be planetary building blocks that formed far from the sun before being captured into their current orbits by Jupiter's powerful gravity. Psyche will explore one of the oddest objects in the solar system -- a 130-mile-wide (210 kilometers) metallic asteroid that may be the core of an ancient, Mars-size planet. Violent collisions billions of years ago might have stripped away the layers of rock that once lay atop this metallic object, scientists say. Psyche is scheduled to launch in October 2023 and arrive at the asteroid in 2030, NASA officials said.

Comments

Give me some steel working Men!

[Invisible Now]

Psyche 16 is a heavy mass of iron. Already well out of the gravity well of the Sun. Give me a few resourceful and creative engineers (The challenge will be way too demanding for AI and Too far away from earth for near real-time robotics) and all I need is an energy source. With our minds and Promethean effort Iwe can craft an iron or steel (using easily scavenged local carbon )space ship forged in space). Then we’ll use the energy source, magnetism from the conductive iron and Iron ions to create an impulse drive to power our beautiful large Beam and Plate habitat on an epic voyage !. It’s all straight forward conventional physics Steel water tanks we’ll fill on the fly from Ice we find drifting out there like cometary space icebergs.. atmosphere by electrolysis. Calling on all you brave sons of Pittsburg! Imagine what we can do! We’ll make the Martian look like the dirt farmer he was!