All NASA haters out there must admit that the space agency has some fancy “toys” for exploring space. It proves it once again by unveiling its Psyche spacecraft that’s supposed to fly beyond Mars and all the way to a metal-rich asteroid.
If landing on the Red Planet is still a bit difficult, even in 2022, maybe sending a probe even farther is more feasible. NASA plans to land a probe on the 16 Psyche asteroid to study it better. There’s no wonder why astronomers are investing a lot of effort in the mission. They believe that the asteroid is rich in metals, and studying it would help humanity learn more about the Solar System and maybe about the Universe itself.
NASA prepares Psyche spacecraft to explore a metal-rich asteroid pic.twitter.com/BnB29E2Sfq
— New TR News Agency (@NewTRNewsAgency) April 13, 2022
NASA’s spacecraft is supposed to fly around the asteroid in 2026, and it will even pass by Mars in 2023. Otherwise, NASA hopes to send astronauts to the Red Planet until the end of the decade.
However, many are wondering, even today, why wasn’t NASA already capable of sending astronauts to Mars. Sure, the distance between our planet and Mars is huge, and many experiments are needed to say for sure that it’s safe for a human to go to the Red Planet. But still, we’re more than 50 years away since humanity has landed on the Moon for the first time.
Peter Diamandis, who’s the CEO of Zero Gravity Operations, believes that politics might hold the answer to the big conundrum. He explained, as Insider quotes:
So what’s happened throughout all of space history after the Apollo program was over was to start, stop, start, stop, cancel. President comes in like Bush comes in to go to the Moon, back to Mars and the next president comes in and cancels that,
The agency is unable to sustain consistent funding to do anything.
In the end, perhaps time will solve everything, including giving the answers to all the big questions we have!