NASA is sending a spacecraft to an asteroid said to be worth quintillions

NASA has sent a rocket to explore an asteroid that is estimated to be worth around $10 quintillion.

The asteroid, located between Mars and Jupiter, is called Psyche and is likely to have started out as a small planet that had its outer layers of rock blasted away in multiple, violent ‘hit-and-run collisions’ when the solar system was forming. Scientists believe that what remains is an exposed nickel-iron core rich in many other rare elements and minerals - including gold, platinum, copper, cobalt and iridium.

It has been estimated that, if these were harvested and valued on Earth at current rates, the asteroid would be worth $10 quintillion - many multiples of what the world's economy is worth.

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Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the lead scientist on the NASA mission, calculated that the iron alone would be worth US $10,000 quadrillion - if the 200km-wide body could somehow be transported back to our planet. The gross world product (GWP) in 2015 was $73.7 trillion, so our economy would collapse if such a feat were possible.

Discussing Psyche’s staggering value, Elkins-Tanton told Global News: “That’s something I’ve contemplated for a long time. Even if we could grab a big metal piece and drag it back here … what would you do?

“Could you kind of sit on it and hide it and control the global resource — kind of like diamonds are controlled corporately — and protect your market? What if you decided you were going to bring it back and you were just going to solve the metal resource problems of humankind for all time?

“This is wild speculation obviously.”

NASA isn’t planning to bring Psyche home, she added, as the technology to do so does not even exist. Instead, the mission aims to observe the asteroid and then report back. Scientists believe Psyche may be able to tell us how Earth’s core - and the cores of the other rocky planets - came to be, and how planets separate into layers of core, mantle and crust.

Psyche was discovered by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis on 17 March 1852. It is sometimes referred to as 16 Psyche - as it was the sixteenth asteroid to be discovered - and it was named after the Greek goddess of the soul who was born mortal and married Eros, the god of love.

The potato-shaped asteroid, which has a surface area of 165,800 square kilometres, is likely to be between 30 and 60 per cent metal, according to NASA. The space agency launched a rocket to travel to it in October 2023 and it is expected to fly by Mars in May 2026 and reach Psyche by 2029.