Psyche 16 was originally discovered in 1852 and is believed to be the remnants of a protoplanet destroyed by 'hit-and-run collisions' when the solar system was forming. It is hoped this will help NASA in its mission, as it will have a more detailed starting point in its observations. They were able to determine it has a metallic surface made up of at least 30 per cent metal and that the rocks on the surface are peppered with metal grains. Normally, infrared images of a space rock provide a single pixel of data, but using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, researchers were able to get 50 pixel resolution and learn more about the surface of the space rock.
To help in this mission, a new temperature map has been created of Psyche by a team from Caltech in Pasadena, California to provide insight into its surface properties. NASA is sending a mission to study the metal rich asteroid in 2026 in an effort to determine its origins, with some speculation it was the core of an early planet. Psyche is a 124 mile-wide space rock that orbits the sun in the asteroid belt, a donut-shaped region of space between Mars and Jupiter containing over a million rocks. The Psyche asteroid is packed full of precious metals and could be worth more than $10,000 quadrillion (£8,072 quadrillion), new measurements of its surface temperature have confirmed.
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