NASA's new '16 Psyche' mission to unearth earthly mysteries. Here's what this mission will explore

How often do we see NASA missions going out deep into outer space to search for clues about the depths of the earth? Well, here’s one mission called ‘Mission Psyche’. Scientists are still clueless about the actual story that’s going on in the inside of the earth’s inner crust. They do know there’s a core, or what part and how much of the radius is covered by what elements, thanks to some indirect methods such as studying the earth’s magnetic fields and earthquake waves.

But that’s not enough to satisfy the ‘all-observing’ eye of the scientists until, of course, a thorough examination of the insides of the earth is carried out, much like the fashion in which the ‘outside’ of the earth has been explored in recent decades by NASA. This is the talk at least. In reality, such ventures are nearly impossible to undertake, considering the extremely high temperature of the core that awaits any potential excited explorers.

So unreachable is the earth’s core, that scientists are willing to ship missions billions of kilometres away (yes 4 billion KMs) into uncharted deep space territory rather than going a few thousand kilometres into the earth. And that might be the only possible way for us to find answers. But ‘how in space’ can we know about the earth’s deepest points from an asteroid, billions of kilometres away? Sounds funny huh?

Well, this is, gentlemen, a brainchild of the most intelligent people working in NASA. Kudos to them for finding out an asteroid, ‘Psyche 16’, which possibly shares its composition with the inner crust of the earth. While it is not a hundred percent guaranteed yet, but if a link is found between the asteroid and the earth’s crust, which scientists believe there is (and are confident enough to approve $1 Billion for the project), any research done on that asteroid would be as though we are examining the insides of the planet Earth.

There obviously is a hypothesis that links the earth’s inner crust to the ’16 psyche’ asteroid. Scientists believe that long ago in the ‘violent’ phase of the universe when planets were forming, ’16 Psyche’ and other similar metallic asteroids were hit by objects and were stripped of their outer crusts. What remained and is hopefully still remaining (fingers crossed) is the inner crust just above the core. This inner crust is that which scientists are interested in exploring.

If the necessary conditions i.e., factors that confirm the link, are found on ’16 Psyche’, the resulting geological studies can lead us to better answers or even reshape our entire understanding of the planet Earth. In case the linking factors are not found, the mission still shouldn’t be a failure. This is the first time we are going to a metallic asteroid, that being said, any discoveries made are always going to be worth the cost and time. NASA would have been planning a trip to the metallic asteroids anyways, if not for one additional reason.

The mission is going to be uncrewed, as is always the SOP when going to uncharted territories. The extraordinary distance is expected to be covered in 6 years starting from 5th Oct, 2023. The spacecraft that is going on the mission, also named ‘Psyche’, took more than 5 years of construction, and is finally ready.