Similar Stories to Spacex Wins The $117 Million Launch Contract To Explore Psyche’s Heavy Metal Asteroid on Bing News

SpaceX has won the launch contract for NASA’s 2022 mission to explore the mineral-rich asteroid known as Psyche, the space agency announced today, including launch services and other mission-related costs valued at $117 million — remarkably low for a mission of this scale. The Psyche mission will use a falcon Heavy rocket which will launch from Launch Complex 39A at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Located between Mars and Jupiter, the Psyche asteroid is made of the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet and represents a fragment of one of the earliest building blocks of our solar system. NASA is hoping that the exploration of Psyche will yield to clues about the history of the evolution of terrestrial planets through the examination of Psyche’s own proto-planetary material. NASA moves to final planning stages for mission to explore 16 Psyche’s full-metal asteroid The space agency’s Psyche mission includes two two secondary payloads: The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, which will study the atmosphere on Mars and the Janus mission, which will study binary asteroids. NASA said its Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will manage the SpaceX launch service and that the mission is led by Arizona State University . “With the transition into this new mission phase, we are one big step closer to uncovering the secrets of Psyche, a giant mysterious metallic asteroid, and that means the world to us,” said principal investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University in Tempe, in a statement when NASA announced that it was approving the mission. Pasadena, Calif.’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be the overall manager for the mission including system engineering, integration, testing and mission operations.