A psychedelic composite image of Mars, showing what the Psyche mission saw as it approached the red planet from 2 May to 15 May 2026. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)
The Universe is so unimaginably immense, we'll never be able to see all of it – yet some of its most intriguingly mysterious objects are located right in our own solar backyard.A NASA spacecraft is currently speeding toward such an object, promising to reveal a unique body unlike any we've ever explored. "For the first time ever, we are exploring a world made not of rock or ice, but of metal," astronomers announce.On its journey to this mysterious object, NASA's probe is capturing some incredible views of the Solar System, which the space agency has just revealed to the world.The spacecraft's ultimate destination is an asteroid named Psyche, after the Greek goddess of the soul, discovered by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis in 1852. Astronomers have since hypothesized that potato-shaped Psyche may be the debris-blasted iron core of a planetesimal, the building block of planets.An illustration of the 16th asteroid to be discovered, named Psyche, or 16 Psyche, though its true visual appearance is still unknown. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)As is consistent with Greek imagery, this asteroid may be partially nude, perhaps exhibiting an exposed metal core like the bare ribs of a tattered zombie from the Solar System's early days, when embryonic planets routinely smashed each other to bits.Accordingly, Psyche is situated in a planetary graveyard of sorts, three times farther from the Sun than we are, in the asteroid belt that forms the rocky-to-gassy-body boundary between Mars and Jupiter.Psyche is approximately 280 kilometers (170 miles) across its longest dimension and roughly the size of Massachusetts, but its overall composition is contentiously uncertain.
