Tag: asteroid

NASA Astronomers Predict Near-Earth Asteroid’s 2029 Close Encounter

About 5 and a 1/2 years from now, astronomers predict, an asteroid about as wide as the Empire State Building is tall will streak through space within 20,000 miles (32,200 kms) of Earth, the closest any celestial object of that size will have come to our planet in modern history.

When it does, a spacecraft launched by NASA in 2016 is expected to be in position to provide a detailed examination of this rare close encounter.

The mission, directed by University of Arizona scientists, is expected to yield insights into planetary formation and knowledge that could inform efforts to build a defense system against possible doomsday asteroid collisions with Earth.

At the time of its 2004 discovery, the asteroid Apophis, named for a demon serpent embodying evil and chaos in ancient Egyptian mythology, appeared to pose a dire impact threat to Earth, with scientists forecasting a potential collision in 2029. Refined observations have since ruled out any impact risk for at least another century.

Still, its next approach in 2029 will bring the asteroid within a cosmic cat’s whisker of Earth — less than one-tenth the moon‘s distance from us and well within the orbits of some geosynchronous Earth satellites.

The spacecraft now headed for a rendezvous with Apophis is OSIRIS-REx, which made headlines plucking a soil sample from a different asteroid three years ago and sending it back to Earth in a capsule that made a parachute landing in Utah in September.

Spacecraft’s second act

Rather than retire the spacecraft, NASA has rebranded it as OSIRIS-APEX — short for APophis EXplorer — and fired its thrusters to put it on course for its next target.

The Apophis expedition was detailed in a mission overview published in the Planetary Science Journal.

Apophis, oblong and somewhat peanut-shaped, is a stony asteroid believed to consist mostly of silicate materials along with iron and nickel. Measuring about 1,110 feet (340 meters) across, it is due to pass within about 19,800 miles (31,860 kms) of Earth’s surface on April 13, 2029, becoming visible to the naked eye for a few hours, said Michael Nolan, deputy principal investigator for the mission at the University of Arizona.

“It’s not going to be this glorious show,” Nolan said, but it will appear as a point of reflected sunlight in the night sky over Africa and Europe.

An asteroid that large passing so near to Earth is estimated to occur roughly once every 7,500 years. The Apophis flyby is the first such encounter predicted in advance.

The tidal pull of Earth’s gravity likely will cause measurable disturbances to the asteroid’s surface and motion, changing its orbital path and rotational spin. Tidal forces could trigger landslides on Apophis and dislodge rocks and dust particles to create a comet-like tail.

The spacecraft is set to observe the asteroid’s Earth flyby as it nears and ultimately catches up with Apophis. These images and data would be combined with ground-based telescope measurements to detect and quantify how Apophis was altered as it passed by Earth.

OSIRIS-APEX is scheduled to remain near Apophis for 18 months – orbiting, maneuvering around it and even hovering just over its surface, using rocket thrusters to kick up loose material and reveal what lies beneath. 

Planetary science and defense

Like other asteroids, Apophis is a relic of the early solar system. Its mineralogy and chemistry are largely unchanged in more than 4.5 billion years, offering clues to the origin and development of rocky planets like Earth.

Close examination of Apophis could give planetary defense experts valuable information about the structure and other properties of asteroids. The more scientists know about the composition, density and orbital behavior of such celestial “rubble piles,” the greater the chances of devising effective asteroid-deflection strategies to mitigate impact threats.

NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into a small asteroid last year in a planetary-defense test that nudged the rocky object from its normal path, marking the first time humankind altered the natural motion of a celestial body.

Apophis is substantially larger than that asteroid but tiny compared with the one that struck Earth 66 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs.

While not big enough to pose an existential threat to life on Earth, an Apophis-sized asteroid striking the planet at hypersonic speed still could devastate a major city or region, Nolan said, with ocean impact unleashing tsunamis.

“It wouldn’t be globally catastrophic in the sense of mass extinctions,” but an impact “would definitely come under the category of bad,” Nolan said.

“This thing is coming in at many miles per second if it hits. And at that speed, it kind of doesn’t whether if it’s made of gravel or ice or rocks or whatever. It’s just a big, heavy thing moving fast,” Nolan added.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

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NASA Unveils Newly Returned Carbon-Rich Asteroid Sample

NASA on Wednesday gave the public a first glimpse of what scientists found inside a sealed capsule that was returned to Earth last month carrying a carbon-rich soil sample scooped from an asteroid‘s surface, including water-bearing clay minerals.

A small quantity of the material collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft three years ago from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu was unveiled in an auditorium at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, a little more than two weeks after it was parachuted into the Utah desert.

The return capsule’s landing capped a seven-year joint mission of the US space agency and the University of Arizona. It was only the third asteroid sample, and by far the biggest, returned to Earth for analysis, following two similar missions by Japan’s space agency ending in 2010 and 2020.

“It’s days like this that continue to amaze me,” NASA chief Bill Nelson said from the stage as he introduced the first picture of material retrieved from Bennu, a celestial artifact about 4.5 billions years old, on a viewing screen.

The image showed a loose cluster of small charcoal-colored rocks, pebbles and dust found to have been left in the outer portion of the sample-collection assembly when the asteroid’s soil was sucked through a filter into the spacecraft’s storage canister.

Technicians are still methodically disassembling hardware surrounding the inner science canister containing the bulk of the specimen, a process expected to take two more weeks.

But the “bonus” sample of overflow material was immediately examined with electron microscopes and X-ray instruments, said Dante Lauretta, principal mission investigator at the University of Arizona.

What they found was material high in carbon, nearly 5% by weight of an element essential to all life on Earth, as well as water molecules locked in the crystallized structure of clay fibers, Lauretta said.

Scientists also discovered iron minerals in the form of iron sulfides and iron oxides, “which themselves are indicative of formation in a water-rich environment,” Lauretta told a later news briefing.

Daniel Glavin, a senior sample scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said early analysis found the material seems to be “loaded with organics.”

The preliminary findings point to a likelihood of further discoveries that could buttress the hypothesis that early Earth was seeded with the primordial ingredients for life by celestial objects such as comets, asteroids and meteorites that bombarded the young planet.

Ancient rubble pile

Bennu, discovered in 1999, is described by scientists as a relatively loose clump of rocky material, like a rubble pile, held together by gravity. It measures about three-tenths of a mile (500 meters) across, making it slightly wider than the Empire State Building is tall but tiny compared with the Chicxulub asteroid that struck Earth some 66 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs.

Like other asteroids, Bennu is a relic of the early solar system. Because its present-day chemistry and mineralogy are virtually unchanged since its formation, it holds clues to the origins and development of rocky planets such as Earth, and could prove central to studies of astrobiology.

The capsule was initially inspected at the Utah Test and Training range near the landing site, then flown to Houston for closer examination in a specially built “clean room” inside a Johnson Space Center astromaterials curation facility.

In the months ahead, the overall asteroid sample is to be parceled out into smaller specimens promised to some 200 scientists in 60 laboratories around the world.

At the time it landed, the Bennu sample was estimated to weigh about 250 grams (8.8 ounces), well above the minimum amount of 60 grams (2 ounces) scientists had hoped to collect. A more precise measurement will come in a few weeks, once the canister has been fully opened and all the contents weighed.

OSIRIS-REx launched in 2016 and reached Bennu in 2018, then spent nearly two years orbiting it before venturing close enough to snatch a sample of the loose surface material with its robotic arm on October 20, 2020.

Lauretta said preliminary analysis of the first bits of the sample showed that orbital observations of the asteroid had “predicted the mineralogy very accurately.” 

NASA is due to launch a separate mission on Thursday to a more distant asteroid called Psyche, a metal-rich body believed to be the remnant core of a protoplanet and the largest known metallic object in the solar system.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

Samsung launched the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Galaxy Z Flip 5 alongside the Galaxy Tab S9 series and Galaxy Watch 6 series at its first Galaxy Unpacked event in South Korea. We discuss the company’s new devices and more on the latest episode of Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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Asteroid Discovery Suggests Ingredients for Life on Earth Came From Space

Two organic compounds essential for living organisms have been found in samples retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu, buttressing the notion that some ingredients crucial for the advent of life arrived on Earth aboard rocks from space billions of years ago.

Scientists said on Tuesday they detected uracil and niacin in rocks obtained by the Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft from two sites on Ryugu in 2019. Uracil is one of the chemical building blocks for RNA, a molecule carrying directions for building and operating living organisms. Niacin, also called Vitamin B3 or nicotinic acid, is vital for their metabolism.

The Ryugu samples, which looked like dark-gray rubble, were transported 155 million miles (250 million km) back to Earth and returned to our planet’s surface in a sealed capsule that landed in 2020 in Australia’s remote outback for analysis in Japan.

Scientists long have pondered about the conditions necessary for life to arise after Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago. The new findings fit well with the hypothesis that bodies like comets, asteroids and meteorites that bombarded early Earth seeded the young planet with compounds that helped pave the way for the first microbes.

Scientists previously detected key organic molecules in carbon-rich meteorites found on Earth. But there was the question of whether these space rocks had been contaminated by exposure to the Earth’s environment after landing.

“Our key finding is that uracil and niacin, both of which are of biological significance, are indeed present in extraterrestrial environments and they may have been provided to the early Earth as a component of asteroids and meteorites. We suspect they had a role in prebiotic evolution on Earth and possibly for the emergence of first life,” said astrochemist Yasuhiro Oba of Hokkaido University in Japan, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Communications.

“These molecules on Ryugu were recovered in a pristine extraterrestrial setting,” Oba said. “It was directly sampled on the asteroid Ryugu and returned to Earth, and finally to laboratories without any contact with terrestrial contaminants.”

RNA, short for ribonucleic acid, would not be possible without uracil. RNA, a molecule present in all living cells, is vital in coding, regulation and activity of genes. RNA has structural similarities to DNA, a molecule that carries an organism’s genetic blueprint.

Niacin is important in underpinning metabolism and can help produce the “energy” that powers living organisms.

The researchers extracted uracil, niacin and some other organic compounds in the Ryugu samples by soaking the material in hot water and then performing analyses called liquid chromatography and high-resolution mass spectrometry.

Organic astrochemist and study co-author Yoshinori Takano of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) said he is now looking forward to the results of analyses on samples being returned to Earth in September from another asteroid. The U.S. space agency NASA during its OSIRIS-REx mission collected samples in 2020 from the asteroid Bennu.

Oba said uracil and niacin were found at both landing sites on Ryugu, which is about a half-mile (900 meters) in diameter and is classified as a near-Earth asteroid. The concentrations of the compounds were higher at one of the sites than the other.

The sample from the site with the lower concentrations was derived from surface material more susceptible to degradation induced by energetic particles darting through space, Oba said. The sample from the other site was mainly derived from subsurface material more protected from degradation, Oba added.

Asteroids are rocky primordial bodies that formed in the early solar system. The researchers suggest that the organic compounds found on Ryugu may have been formed with the help of chemical reactions caused by starlight in icy materials residing in interstellar space.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

After facing headwinds in India last year, Xiaomi is all set to take on the competition in 2023. What are the company’s plans for its wide product portfolio and its Make in India commitment in the country? We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

 

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Asteroid Ryugu Sample Has Dust Grains Older Than Our Solar System

Examining samples from asteroid Ryugu, scientists have made a startling discovery. They have spotted microscopic grains of ancient materials that are even older than our Solar System. Located in the near-Earth solar orbit, asteroid Ryugu is shaped like a spinning top and orbits the Sun every 16 months. The Hayabusa2 spacecraft of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was tasked with exploring asteroid Ryugu (162173) from June 2018 to November 2019. Dispatching a series of landers and penetrators, the spacecraft collected a sample from Ryugu and sent it back to Earth in 2020. In the new analysis of this sample, scientists have detected pre-solar material in it and believe that studying them may shed some new light on the phenomena behind the formation of our solar system.

According to cosmochemist Jens Barosch of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, different types of presolar grains are the result of different types of stars and stellar processes. This can be identified using their isotopic signature, he added. The isotopes are considered to be crucial for understanding the chemistry of distant stars and the processes that took place in them.

“The opportunity to identify and study these grains in the lab can help us understand the astrophysical phenomena that shaped our Solar System, as well as other cosmic objects,” said Barosch. He is also the lead author of the study.

In the study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the team could detect 57 grains of presolar material. Previous studies had also spotted some presolar material in Ryugu. The team compared the newly discovered grains with those found in meteorites and observed that Ryugu’s composition was similar to CI chondrites. These are a rare sub-type of carbonaceous chondrites, whose composition resembles with that of the Sun.

“The samples returned from asteroid Ryugu by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft contain presolar stardust grains. Their abundances and compositions are similar to presolar material found in CI chondrites,” researchers wrote in their paper. They added that the results provide evidence that Ryugu asteroid is closely related to chondrites.

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NASA’s James Webb Telescope Damaged After Being Hit By Space Rock: Report

The world’s largest and most powerful space telescope by NASA, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), has suffered massive damage from an asteroid strike in May. 

The telescope was built by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). It is made up of precious technology and it carries one of the largest mirrors on a space telescope in order to observe phenomena and events in space previously inaccessible to the world. 

For the telescope to fulfil this ambition, it is required that the JWST remains operational for years to come. However, concerns are now being raised over the longevity of the project as it was revealed that an asteroid strike in May 2022 might have left the telescope in worse shape than previously understood. 

As per Forbes, a group of scientists outlined the performance of the space telescope. They reported problems that “cannot be corrected”. Writing about the projected lifetime of the Webb telescope, the researchers said, “At present, the largest source of uncertainty is long-term effects of micrometeoroid impacts that slowly degrade the primary mirror.”

Also Read | NASA’s Perseverance Rover Spots Hair Ball-Like Object On Mars

The scientists informed that since the launch, the Webb telescope has been struck by six micrometeorites. While five of the meteorites did a negligible amount of damage, a sixth caused some damage to the JWST. 

Providing more information regarding the asteroid strike, the researchers said, “The micrometeoroid which hit segment C3 in the period 22—24 May 2022 UT caused a significant uncorrectable change in the overall figure of that segment. However, the effect was small at the full telescope level because only a small portion of the telescope area was affected.” 

Notably, as the damage has taken place on one of the panels, it will not impact the Webb telescope’s image-taking abilities at all. However, as per the outlet, the engineers who designed Webb know that its mirrors and sun-shield will unavoidably slowly degrade from micrometeoroid impacts. 

Also Read | NASA, SpaceX Send Climate Research Experiments to ISS Aboard Resupply Mission

Moreover, scientists also expect Webb’s detectors to be gradually damaged by charged particles. They believe that its sun-shield and innovative five-layer insulation will degrade from space weathering. Since its mirror is exposed to space, the researchers also said that micrometeoroid strikes are difficult for Webb to avoid.

The $9.7 billion space telescope was launched on Christmas Day in 2021. Earlier this month, NASA revealed the first of many images that it captured of deep space.

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Data From Black Beauty Martian Meteorite May Shed Light on Mars’ History

Back in 2011, a Martian meteorite called Northwest Africa 7034 was found in the Sahara Desert. Dubbed Black Beauty, the meteorite is believed to contain some of the oldest Martian igneous material. Now, in a new study, researchers have managed to zero in on the meteorite’s origin on the Red Planet. The findings are likely to help shed light on the early history of Mars and its environment back then.

A team of researchers from Australia’s Curtin University studied the chemical and physical properties of the meteorite to determine the location of its origin on Mars. The chemical composition of Black Beauty suggested that Mars also had volcanic activity like Earth. The team concluded that the meteorite originated from one of the oldest regions of Mars called Terra Cimmeria-Sirenum.

Black Beauty was ejected some five to 10 million years ago from the Red Planet after an asteroid impact. Being that ancient, it encapsulated the first stage of Mars’ evolution. “This meteorite recorded the first stage of the evolution of Mars and, by extension, of all terrestrial planets, including the Earth. As the Earth lost its old surface mainly due to plate tectonics, observing such settings in extremely ancient terrains on Mars is a rare window into the ancient Earth surface that we lost a long time ago,” said Valerie Payré, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science.

Researchers in a previous study developed an algorithm that analysed high-resolution images of the Martian surface to identify small impact carters. In the latest study, published in Nature Communications, a crater named Karratha was pinpointed as the most plausible site of ejection for the meteorite.

Researchers now hope that data from such ancient fragments like the Black Beauty would unearth information on Mars’ evolution and possibly our planet as well. “This work paves the road to locate the ejection site of other martian meteorites that will provide the most exhaustive view of the geological history of Mars and will answer one of the most intriguing questions: why Mars, now dry and cold, evolved so differently from Earth, a flourishing planet for life?” said Payré.

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Asteroid Bennu’s Surface Like a Pit of Plastic Balls, NASA’s Spacecraft Almost Sank Into It, Say Scientists

While scientists believed that asteroid Bennu had a smooth and plain surface, they were recently astonished to learn the true nature of its exterior. An analysis of the data gathered by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft revealed that Bennu’s surface consists of loosely packed particles that resemble a pit filled with plastic balls.

The latest revelation was made after OSIRIS-REx collected samples from the asteroid in October 2020 and sent back close-up and detailed pictures of Bennu’s surface to Earth. “What we saw was a huge wall of debris radiating out from the sample site. We were like, ‘Holy cow!’” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of OSIRIS-REx, based at the University of Arizona.

Scientists observed the surface covered with numerous pebbles while the spacecraft also witnessed an unusually gentle landing. A large crater measuring 8 metres wide was also noticed that had been formed due to the touchdown of the spacecraft. “Every time we tested the sample pickup procedure in the lab, we barely made a divot,” said Lauretta.

Puzzled by the strange property of Bennu’s surface, the mission decided to send the spacecraft back to take more photos. Scientists looked at the volume of debris in before and after pictures while they also analysed the acceleration data during the spacecraft’s landing. It was learned that OSIRIS-REx experienced very little resistance when it made the touch down. Ron Ballouz, an OSIRIS-REx scientist, shared that “by the time we fired our thrusters to leave the surface we were still plunging into the asteroid.”

The team of scientists carried out hundreds of simulations and used the acceleration data and images to interpret the density and cohesion of the asteroid. The findings were published in two papers in Science and Science Advances which were led by Dante Lauretta and member of the OSIRIS-REx science team Kevin Walsh, respectively.

The asteroid had surprised earlier too when OSIRIS-REx observed its surface to be filled with boulders rather than a sandy and smooth surface they had expected.

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NASA’s DART Asteroid Mission Could Severely Deform Target Asteroid, New Study Reveals

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is the world’s first full-scale planetary defence test against potential asteroid impacts on Earth. Researchers now show that instead of leaving behind a relatively small crater, the impact of the DART spacecraft on its target could leave the asteroid near unrecognisable.

A giant asteroid impact on the Earth likely caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago. Currently no known asteroid poses an immediate threat. But if one day a large asteroid were to be discovered on a collision course with Earth, it might have to be deflected from its trajectory to prevent catastrophic consequences.

Last November, the DART space probe of the US space agency NASA was launched as a first full-scale experiment of such a manoeuvre: Its mission is to collide with an asteroid and to deflect it from its orbit, in order to provide valuable information for the development of such a planetary defense system.

In a new study published in The Planetary Science Journal, researchers of the University of Bern and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS have simulated this impact with a new method. Their results indicate that it may deform its target far more severely than previously thought.

Rubble instead of solid rock

“Contrary to what one might imagine when picturing an asteroid, direct evidence from space missions like the Japanese space agency’s (JAXA) Hayabusa2 probe demonstrate that asteroid can have a very loose internal structure — similar to a pile of rubble — that is held together by gravitational interactions and small cohesive forces,” says study lead-author Sabina Raducan from the Institute of Physics and the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS at the University of Bern.

Yet, previous simulations of the DART mission impact mostly assumed a much more solid interior of its asteroid target Dimorphos. “This could drastically change the outcome the collision of DART and Dimorphos, which is scheduled to take place in the coming September,” Raducan points out.

Instead of leaving a relatively small crater on the 160 meter wide asteroid, DART’s impact at a speed of around 24,000kmph could completely deform Dimorphos. The asteroid could also be deflected much more strongly and larger amounts of material could be ejected from the impact than the previous estimates predicted.

A prize winning new approach

“One of the reasons that this scenario of a loose internal structure has so far not been thoroughly studied is that the necessary methods were not available,” study lead-author Sabina Raducan says.

“Such impact conditions cannot be recreated in laboratory experiments and the relatively long and complex process of crater formation following such an impact — a matter of hours in the case of DART — made it impossible to realistically simulate these impact processes up to now,” according to the researcher.

“With our novel modelling approach, which takes into account the propagation of the shock waves, the compaction and the subsequent flow of material, we were for the first time able to model the entire cratering process resulting from impacts on small, asteroids like Dimorphos,” Raducan reports. For this achievement, she was awarded by ESA and by the mayor of Nice at a workshop on the DART follow-up mission HERA.

Widen horizon of expectations

In 2024, the European Space Agency ESA will send a space probe to Dimorphos as part of the space mission HERA. The aim is to visually investigate the aftermath of the DART probe impact. “To get the most out of the HERA mission, we need to have a good understanding of potential outcomes of the DART impact,” says study co-author Martin Jutzi from the Institute of Physics and the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS. “Our work on the impact simulations adds an important potential scenario that requires us to widen our expectations in this regard. This is not only relevant in the context of planetary defense, but also adds an important piece to the puzzle of our understanding of asteroids in general,” Jutzi concludes.

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NASA Puts Pysche Mission on Hold, Blames Late Delivery of Navigation Software

NASA put an asteroid mission on hold on Friday, blaming the late delivery of its own navigation software. The Psyche mission to a strange metal asteroid of the same name was supposed to launch this September or October. But the agency’s Jet Propulsion Lab was several months late delivering its software for navigation, guidance and control — a crucial part of any spacecraft. Engineers “just ran out of time” to test it, officials said Friday.

Now, the space agency is going to step back, and an independent review will look at what went wrong, when the spacecraft could launch again and even if it should go ahead, NASA planetary sciences chief Lori Glaze said.

NASA has already spent $717 million (nearly Rs. 5,600 crore) on Psyche and its projected total cost, including the rocket to launch it, is $985 million (nearly Rs. 7,700 crore). The small car-sized spacecraft was originally supposed to arrive at its asteroid in 2026 after a journey of more than 1 billion miles.

Now that the software has been delivered, there’s no known problems with the spacecraft except “we just haven’t been able to test it,” said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the Psyche mission lead scientist.

“There is that one challenge we couldn’t overcome in time to launch in 2022 with confidence,” she said.

There are still at least two launch opportunities next year and more in 2024 to get to the asteroid that sits in the belt between Mars and Jupiter, said JPL Director Laurie Leshin. That means Psyche wouldn’t arrive at its asteroid until 2029 or 2030.

But calculating launch times is complicated because the mission needs the proper sunlight conditions and the asteroid “is spinning like a rotisserie chicken instead of like a top,” Elkins-Tanton said.

Two other small missions were going to ride along on the SpaceX Falcon heavy rocket and NASA is looking at what will happen to those.

Psyche is just the latest in NASA’s fleet of asteroid-exploring spacecrafts. Osiris-Rex is on the way back to Earth with rubble from the asteroid [Bennu](https://gadgets360.com/science/news/bennu-asteroid-nasa-boulder-body-armour-protection-meteorites-osiris-rex-spacecraft-3078583). Last year, NASA launched the ships Lucy and Dart to explore other space rocks and test if a rocket could knock off course an asteroid heading smack into Earth.

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