There’s an asteroid on the market costlier than every thing Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Donald Trump personal put collectively, and it has been floating round in house for hundreds of years. Whereas the asteroid prices a whopping $10,000,000,000,000,000,000 ($10 quintillion) – the most expensive factor to ever exist – what is de facto baffling is that it was found 172 years in the past.The journey to seize the asteroidLast 12 months, house company NASA introduced that it was going to set off for the asteroid named 16 Psyche, which is probably going a combination of rock and metallic, with metallic making up between 30 p.c to 60 p.c of its quantity.It is thought to comprise valuable metals together with gold, iron and nickel, that are value an eye-watering quantity.An illustration of 16 Psyche. (Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Expertise)In an announcement launched in July, Nasa stated: “Groups of engineers and technicians are working virtually across the clock to make sure the orbiter is able to journey 2.5 billion miles to a metal-rich asteroid that will inform us extra about planetary cores and the way planets kind.”And the journey has begun; the spacecraft was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Area Middle in Cape Canaveral, Florida on 13 October, 2023.When will the spacecraft attain 16 Psyche?The vessel is anticipated to fly by Mars in Might 2026, utilizing the planet’s gravity as a slingshot to extend velocity, and if all goes as deliberate, in July 2029 the asteroid Psyche’s gravity will seize the spacecraft after a journey of about 2.2 billion miles (3.6 billion kilometers).The spacecraft will then conduct its prime mission, gathering science knowledge whereas orbiting the asteroid from August 2029 to November 2031.However NASA has revealed that it was within the 12 months 1852 that an Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis really found the asteroid.The complete flight system, together with the spacecraft’s two five-panel photo voltaic arrays, is concerning the measurement of a singles tennis court docket. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)The asteroid’s originsThe identify 16 Psyche references the very fact it was the sixteenth asteroid to be found, in addition to Pysche, the goddess of the soul in historic Greek mythology, typically depicted as a butterfly-winged feminine determine.The house group listed some cool information about it – a kind of being that it orbits the Solar within the outer a part of the principle asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and it’s roughly 3 times farther from the Solar than Earth is.NASA has invested roughly $1.2 billion to develop, launch, and function the Psyche mission.This contains about $131 million in launch providers for Psyche and the Deep Area Optical Communications (DSOC) know-how demonstration – the associated fee for creating and working DSOC is about $206 million.It is an terrible lot of cash being splashed on a rock, however simply how helpful may the invention be to mankind?