NASA sending a mission to capture asteroid worth $10,000,000,000,000,000,000

NASA sent a rocket to probe an asteroid worth $10,000,000,000,000,000,000 that could hypothetically turn every single person on Planet Earth into billionaires just over a year ago and its employees have said so far, everything is going as planned.

The asteroid is called Psyche and it's found in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

It has so many rare elements and minerals that if they were harvested and valued on Earth at the current rate they are, it would be worth $10 quintillion, which is many, many multiples of what the world's economy is worth.

It was discovered by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis on 17 March 1852, who named it after the Greek goddess of the soul who was born mortal and married Eros (better known by his Roman name Cupid), the god of love.

It is sometimes referred to as 16 Psyche because it was the sixteenth asteroid to be discovered.

- YouTubeOne year after a successful launch on Oct. 13, 2023, team members on the Psyche mission to the metal-rich asteroid of the same ...

The reason for its genuinely unfathomable worth is that it is believed to be made up of elements including platinum and palladium, which are essential to cars and electronics here on Earth.

The composition of the irregular, potato-shaped asteroid, which has a surface area of 64,000 square miles (165,800 square kilometres) is likely between 30 and 60 per cent metal, according to NASA.

The agency's experts believe it is, in fact, the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet (also known as a planetesimal) - one of the building blocks of our solar system.

NASA successfully launched a rocket to travel to it on 13 October 2023 and just over a year on, a number of NASA employees working on the project said everything is currently going as expected.

"In my heart, what I would really love for it to be is that ours was a mission that ignited in so many people the thrill of wanting to see the unknown," said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, principal investigator of the Psyche Mission at NASA.

"My gosh, wait until we get there."

The rocket is scheduled to fly by Mars in May 2026 and reach the asteroid by 2029.

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