NASA is looking for "iron volcanoes" in the heart of a dead planet!

The worlds visited until now by robotic spacecraft are rocks, ice and gas. NASA's new mission will therefore target a body that is believed to be composed of metal.

Scientists believe that the "Psyche" 16, the size of Massachusetts, is the largest known asteroid, the rest of the planet's core, much like the Earth.

It is not yet known what the astronauts will face on the surface of the asteroid, but given its cooling, the next mission of the US space agency scheduled to launch in 2022 may well find a dramatic terrain.

The 16 Psyche missions will be discussed at the 50th LPSC Congress in Texas, an important meeting of the world's foremost planetary scientists to be held this week.

"Our best model for 16 Psyche is that it is frozen from the outside, recording a magnetic field, and that it will be covered with sulfur volcanoes in billions of years," said Lindb Elkins-Tanton, NASA Senior Scientist and Director of the Earth and Space School of the University of Arizona.

She added that the asteroid "Psyche 16" could be a component of "hard metal or maybe a bunch of debris, mostly metal".

The surface can be covered with a substance known as debris, which includes dust and earth, and the presence of iron-rich sulphide volcanoes on the surface of the asteroid depends on how it is cooled.

If the asteroid is cooled during its initial formation, from the outside to the heart, these structures may be visible.

One of the things that happens when the metal freezes is that it loses about 7% of its size. "So we have a hard shell and the interior continues to solidify, but it loses its volume because of this process," she said. Volume during freezing ".

"For the first time in our history, we are exploring a world that is not composed of rocks or ice, but of metal," NASA said in a statement.

"This is the first ever mission for a metal space, which would be mainly made of iron and nickel," the statement said.

The asteroid has not yet been sampled, but NASA wishes to remedy this by planning to send a probe to the asteroid at 16 psyches by 2022.

"16 Psyche" is located in the great belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, one of the most mysterious objects of the solar system. It may have started as a planet before being partially destroyed during the formation of our star system.

Source: Daily Mail