The probe, which is named after Psyche, will blast off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a SpaceX rocket, and its first opportunity to launch comes Thursday morning at 10:16 a.m. EDT.

NASA’s Psyche mission aims to lift off October 12 — and be the first to explore a metal-rich asteroid that may be the exposed core of an early planetary building block.

Psyche is an M-type asteroid, meaning it is metallic, though it's not entirely clear what type of metal it is made of. Spectroscopy, one of the ways scientists determine the composition of ...

The asteroid 16 Psyche is of interest to scientists because it is a large, 173-mile-wide (280-kilometer-wide) fragment of an ancient planet's metallic core that was left over from our solar system ...

NASA's Psyche mission on track for fall launch to metallic asteroid after yearlong delay NASA scientists hope that the 280-million mile, six-year journey to the asteroid could yield valuable ...

The mission, named for the 16 Psyche asteroid it will observe, will travel about 2.2 billion miles (3.6 billion kilometers) over the next six years to reach the space rock, located in the outer ...

Last Friday, NASA launched the Psyche spacecraft toward an asteroid of the same name.Psyche is blazing a trail as the first mission to a metal asteroid, and it’s also about to blaze a literal ...

Launched on Oct. 13, 2023, the NASA mission to visit the metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche aims to find crucial clues about the formation of our solar system's planets.

Scientists hope that Psyche is “something really bizarre,” says Henry Stone of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the project manager of a new mission to explore the asteroid.

NASA and SpaceX are expected to launch a spacecraft to investigate the metal-rich asteroid "Psyche" on Oct. 12, officials announced Thursday.

Psyche launched in October 2023, beginning a 2.2 billion-mile journey to a metal-rich asteroid located in the main belt. The spacecraft began firing its thrusters in May 2024, ...

NASA's Psyche mission is on its way to visit a metal asteroid between Mars and Jupiter, and it recently kicked on its new blue-glowing electric thrusters. Skip to main content Menu ...