Today is a great day for asteroid miners: NASA announced that it will provide full funding under its Discovery Program for two missions focusing on different types of asteroids.
A mission called Lucy will launch in 2021 to study a smorgasbord of asteroids, including one in the main asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter, plus six others among the swarms of space rocks caught in Jupiter’s orbit.
Another mission called Psyche will take off in 2023 to visit a type of asteroid that’s never been seen up close before: a huge metallic object called 16 Psyche that’s similar in composition to Earth’s core.
“This is what Discovery Program missions are all about – boldly going to places we’ve never been to enable groundbreaking science,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA Headquarters’ Science Mission Directorate, said today in a news release.
