Out in our Solar System there is still a class of cosmic objects we’ve never closely examined, metallic asteroids. They’re orbiting the Sun out there in the vacuum of space, but now NASA scientists say they could also tell us a whole lot about our own home.
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00:00Out in the solar system there's still a class of cosmic objects we've never
00:07closely examined. Metallic asteroids. They're orbiting the Sun out there in
00:11the vacuum of space. But now NASA scientists say they could also tell us a
00:15whole lot about our own home. We're pretty sure we have a good idea of
00:18what's going on inside the earth. That is a solid iron-nickel core with a
00:22surrounding molten layer made out of the same material. But without observing it or
00:25something extremely similar to it, with our own scientific lens, we can't be sure.
00:29That's where NASA's Psyche mission comes in, where the Space Administration is
00:33planning to send a spacecraft to land on the Psyche asteroid. Psyche is the
00:37largest metallic asteroid we know of, which Jim Bell, who is working with NASA
00:41on the project, says is around the width of Massachusetts. Asteroids of this size
00:45are scientifically important because they are often remnants of our early
00:48solar system's development, when the planets were formed. And experts believe
00:52that Psyche may have at one point been the core of a planet. NASA's mission,
00:55which is hoping to figure that out, is set to take off in October and will
00:59travel an immense 2.5 billion miles before arriving at the asteroid in
01:03August 2029. It will study Psyche for 26 months, hoping to glean not only its
01:08composition and origin, but also figure out if it was once a planetary core,
01:12perhaps also telling us something about what's going on under our own feet.