NASA has asked billionaire Elon Musk to reach a nearby asteroid containing enough gold to make every person on Earth a billionaire.
SpaceX will join the space agency in efforts to launch an unmanned spacecraft "16 Psyche" early in 2022.
"Saiki's mission is to reach a unique mineral-rich asteroid called Saiki, which orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter," NASA said in a statement. "The asteroid is unique, as it appears to be made largely of the exposed nickel iron core of an early planet, one of the building blocks To our solar system. "
Saike, which is 120 miles wide, is filled with piles of platinum, iron and nickel, and it is estimated that the various asteroid minerals have a price tag of about eight thousand quadrillion pounds (i.e. eight in front of them is zero).
The news site, "The Sun" says that this huge amount may destroy the global economy, as the prices of raw materials will collapse if we extract these minerals and return them to the ground.
The website stated that the mission will depart from the US space agency's website in Cape Canaveral to the asteroid in the summer of 2022.
The space agency is making the trip for scientific purposes, and is not planning to conduct any mining, as the Saiki probe will be loaded with equipment to examine the composition of the asteroid, according to the site.
NASA notes that Saeki is one of the survivors of violent collisions between planets that were common when the solar system was forming.
Scientists hope that this asteroid will tell us how the Earth’s core and the nuclei of other terrestrial planets are formed, and it is hoped that the probe will reach the asteroid in 2026.