Space miners may have to dig somewhere else. 👩🚀 engineering
Future space missions will travel to asteroids to mine the great wealth of material they transport around space. with early estimates suggesting it has a total net worth of $700 quintillion in heavy metals. NASA has already planned a mission to reach the space rock by 2026., scientists revealed that 16 Psyche may contain fewer heavy metals than previously believed, dramatically lowering that estimated value.
Due to seemingly contradictory readings, scientists have so far found it difficult to ascertain the exact composition of. The light that reflects off the asteroid suggests that it is indeed composed mostly of metal. However, measurements of the asteroid's gravitational interaction with nearby space objects suggest it is less dense than expected of a massive ball of iron hurtling through space.
Some researchers have suggested that, if Psyche is mainly composed of metal, it might be highly porous, meaning it would somewhat resemble a giant ball of steel wool with millions of tiny holes between filaments of heavy metal."What we wanted to do with this study was see whether it was possible for an iron body the size of Psyche to maintain that near-50 percent porosity," explained Fiona Nichols-Fleming, a Ph.D. student at Brown and the study's lead author.
The researchers explained that it is incredibly unlikely that a space object the size of 16 Psyche would have cooled so quickly given the conditions of the early universe. Given their results, it is unlikely that 16 Psyche is a porous space rock made almost entirely of iron. They posited that the asteroid is likely hiding a rocky component that gives it a lower density than estimations based on light readings.
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