16 Psyche, A.K.A “Metal World”

There's an asteroid called 16 Psyche, roughly the size of Massachusetts, orbiting in the Asteroid Belt. Why am I telling you this and why should you care? Because recent data shows that it might be entirely made of nickel and iron!

Discovered in March of 1852 by astronomer Annibale de Gasparis, this “metal world” has inspired NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, to launch a new mission scheduled in the summer of 2022, planning to arrive in 2026 to study the asteroid. The mission is simply named “Psyche”.

This asteroid was named after the later Greek goddess of souls, Psyche (Psykhe), who was so beautiful she was comparable to Aphrodite (Venus), goddess of beauty. A bad name, I mean the metal asteroid, because 16 Psyche isn't beautiful at all (sorry asteroid!).

Now here’s the craziest part about the all-metal asteroid: It's worth about $10,000 quadrillions! But don't think about buying it, Bill Gates, the currently richest person on Earth, only has $117.7 billion as of 2020, so you don't have the money, plus, where do you put it? Not on Earth, anyway! Even though it's not actually anyone's, in future missions, we could try mining the “metal world”!