Sat, Feb 04, 2023
The Cold [Cash] of Space
In October 2023, NASA will launch a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket containing sensitive scientific equipment to Psyche—an asteroid valued at a scarcely-believable sum of money. NASA sets forth that the rocket’s outbound journey to the asteroid will span some 42-months.
Upon arriving at Psyche, the spacecraft will commence a 21-month study by which NASA hopes to glean an understanding of the massive asteroid’s structure and history.
Discovered in 1852 by the Italian scientist Annibale de Gasparis and named for Psyche, the Greek goddess of the soul and wife of Eros, the Olympian god of love, the asteroid is among the largest in the solar system. With an average diameter of 220-kilometers, Psyche alone makes up one-percent of the mass of the asteroid belt strewn semi-homogeneously between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. All told, the belt comprises between 1.1 and 1.9-million asteroids larger than one-kilometer, and millions more smaller asteroids.
Unlike the majority of asteroids which are made up of rock and ice, Astronomers posit Psyche is composed primarily of iron and nickel—an indication that the massive asteroid may be the core of a protoplanet that tried and failed to form billions of years ago.
In current dollar values, Psyche’s size and makeup suggest a worth of $10-quintillion—more than 70,000-times that of the entire global economy.
In addition to studying the asteroid and exciting the envy of the Earth’s avaricious, the appositely-named Psyche Program will vet new deep-space communications technologies that NASA theorizes could be used to transmit information across space more efficiently than extant architectures.
The contract for the launch is valued at $117-million—otherwise expressed as slightly more than one eight-billionth the value of the Psyche asteroid.
More News
Very High Frequency The frequency band between 30 and 300 MHz. Portions of this band, 108 to 118 MHz, are used for certain NAVAIDs; 118 to 136 MHz are used for civil air/ground voi>[...]
Aero Linx: Aviation Suppliers Association Established February 25, 1993, the Aviation Suppliers Association (ASA), based in Washington, D.C., is a not-for-profit association, repre>[...]
Have A Story That NEEDS To Be Featured On Aero-News? Here’s How To Submit A Story To Our Team Some of the greatest new stories ANN has ever covered have been submitted by our>[...]
From 2021 (YouTube Version): Colorado Campus Offers aVariety Of Aerospace Entertainment And Education Wings over the Rockies Exploration of Flight is the second location for the Wi>[...]
Also: Paramotor Champ's, Electric Ultralight, ICON BK Update, Burt Rutan at Oshkosh! The Popular Rotorcraft Association is reaching out for help in rebuilding their private runway >[...]