The asteroid Psyche may be a sample of planetary core material left over from the birth of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
Getting off to a ground-shaking start, NASA's $1.2 billion Psyche asteroid probe roared into space atop a Falcon Heavy rocket Friday, setting off on a 2.2-billion-mile voyage to a rare, metal-rich asteroid that may hold clues about how the cores of rocky planets like Earth first formed.
The flight plan called for the 6,000-pound Psyche probe to separate and fly away on its own an hour after launch, kicking off a five-and-a-half-year voyage to the asteroid it was named after.Discovered in 1852 by the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis, Psyche is the largest of nine known metal-rich asteroids, orbiting in the outer asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter three times farther from the sun than Earth.
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