Is NASA Paving the Way for Asteroid Mining?
The agency just greenlit a robotic mission to the most metal-rich space rock in the solar system.
In March 1852, Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis discovered an asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, one of several he would find in his lifetime. He named it Psyche, after the Greek word for the soul. Many decades later, the name would take on new meaning. Scientists believe Psyche, one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, may be the exposed metal core of an early planet, the soul
