NASA has given the okay to its long-delayed US$985 million Psyche deep-space mission to explore a metal-rich asteroid, also called Psyche, that may be worth as much as $10 quadrillion, or 90 times the world’s entire $110-trillion economy.
It’s often difficult to grasp the scale of the universe beyond Earth. Even in our own solar system it is hard to think of in human terms. Because of this, it’s very easy to imagine that the Moon is small enough to walk across in an afternoon instead of having the surface area of Africa or that the Martian rovers are within easy visiting distance of one another instead of thousands of miles apart.
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This is also true in terms of potential resources. The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, for example, is basically the scraps leftover from the creation of the solar system – a rounding error of its mass – but it’s estimated that the mineral wealth in the belt is enough to cut a $100-billion check for every person on Earth.
Read more: New Atlas
