Asteroid 16 Psyche is worth perhaps 10,000 quadrillion dollars

The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered an asteroid in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter called 16 Psyche. The asteroid is located approximately 230 million miles from Earth and is 140 miles wide. These dimensions make the asteroid roughly the size of West Virginia.

What makes 16 Psyche so special isn’t its size or distance from Earth. Rather it is that the asteroid appears to be made of heavy and immensely precious metals. NASA says the asteroid is not rocky or icy like most of the asteroid belt. Rather it is almost entirely made of metal, just like the core of the Earth. NASA says it’s not the only asteroid with metal content, but 16 Psyche may be completely made up of iron and nickel.

Estimates are that, given the asteroid’s size and metal content, it could be worth 10,000 quadrillion dollars. There are too many zeros to put them into perspective. This figure is about 10,000 times the entire global economy in 2019. The researchers exploited ultraviolet spectrum data captured by the Hubble Space Telescope’s imaging spectrograph during observations in 2017 to determine that the surface of Psyche 16 could be more pure iron.

They recognize that the presence of an iron composition of just 10 percent could dominate ultraviolet observations. NASA is planning a mission called Discovery Mission Psyche which is expected to be launched in 2022 using a Falcon Heavy rocket. The mission’s goal is to find out more about the asteroid, including its metal content, when the spacecraft arrives in orbit in 2026.

Lindy Elkins-Tanton, NASA’s chief mission scientist, said in 2017 that 16 Psyche is the only known object of its kind in the solar system. It is also the only way humans will ever visit a planetary core. He said scientists could learn about inner space by visiting outer space as the asteroid is believed to be the core of a planet that failed during the early solar system formation.