PHOENIX - A group from Arizona State is working on an out-of-this-world mission.
NASA has selected ASU's Psyche Mission for flight, making it the organization's first ASU-led mission.
The $450-million mission is to send a robotic space vessel Psyche, a metal asteroid, and orbit around it for 20 months to study and map the asteroid.
Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the mission's principal investigator and the director of ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration, said the mission will provide humans the first look at a planetary core.
She added that the findings could help inform our understanding of the metal interior of our solar system's rocky planets, including Earth. A press release from ASU said the mission's scientific goals are to "understand the building blocks of planet formation and explore firsthand a wholly new and unexplored type of world."
Psyche is made almost entirely of nickel-iron metal and orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter.
The mission will take some time, though -- the spacecraft is expected to launch in 2023 and arrive at the asteroid in 2030.
For more information on the Psyche Mission, read ASU's release on the trek.
