Five things to know about NASA’s mission to a metal world
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For the first time ever, a NASA probe is journeying to an object composed not of rock, ice, or gas, but metal: the asteroid Psyche.By studying this space oddity, scientists hope to learn more about the inner cores of rocky planets such as our own -- or, potentially catalog a previously unknown class of cosmic body. Here are some fun facts about the mission, which launched on Friday. - $10 quadrillion -If Psyche were mineable, its iron, nickel and gold deposits could be worth an eye-watering $10,000 quadrillion (that's $10,000,000,000,000,000,000), according to an estimate reported by Forbes magazine.But Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the mission's principal investigator who was responsible for that calculation, said it's nothing more than a "fun intellectual exercise with no truth to it.""...