NASA To Launch Psyche Mission To Study An Asteroid On This Date. Here's What To Expect

NASA is all set to send a high-tech spacecraft called Psyche on a 2.2 billion mile journey to study a metal-rich asteroid of the same name on October 12. The asteroid is known as 16 Psyche.

The asteroid lies in the outer portion of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Psyche is targeting liftoff at 10:16 a.m. EDT on Thursday, October 12, on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA said in a release.

The goal of the mission is to study this space rock in great detail as it can tell us more about planetary cores and Earth's own formation.

The agency says that this will be the first mission to an asteroid with substantial amounts of metal, as previous missions have explored asteroids made mostly of rock or ice. The asteroid Psyche may be part of the interior of a planetesimal, a building block of a rocky planet. By studying it, scientists seek to determine whether the asteroid was a planetary core.

The Psyche mission will test a sophisticated new laser communication technology called Deep Space Optical Communication (DSOC) that encodes data in photons at near-infrared wavelengths (rather than radio waves) to communicate between a probe in deep space and Earth.

Southwest Research Institute scientists are using telescopes to observe the asteroid Psyche in the infrared, providing context for NASA's upcoming Psyche mission.

The researchers will look for water signatures on the metallic surface of Psyche. The scientists are also using some of the last data collected by the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, to study differences in Psyche's composition at different points on its surface.

"Using telescopes at different infrared wavelengths of light, the SwRI-led research will provide different but complementary information to what the Psyche spacecraft is designed to study," said Dr. Tracy Becker, a group leader in SwRI's Space Science Division.

Members of the public can register to attend the launch virtually. The live launch broadcast will begin at 9:30 a.m. EDT on Thursday, Oct. 12, and will air on NASA's social media channels.