NASA's Psyche Mission To Launch Friday

The launch was originally scheduled for 10:16 a.m. EDT (1416 GMT) atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It has now been delayed to Friday due to weather. 

    Per Space.com, "After traveling an estimated 2.2 billion miles (3.5 billion kilometers), the spacecraft will arrive at the asteroid 16 Psyche, which is located at the far edge of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, in 2029." The asteroid is thought to be rich in metals and its formation may reveal more about early planetary formation in the solar system. Also:

    One of the most vital parts of the Psyche mission will be getting the spacecraft to this distant asteroid and then keeping it in place so its scientific instruments can do their jobs. 

    To do this, the spacecraft, which measures 16.1 by 7.1 by 7.8 feet (4.9 by 2.2 by 2.4 meters), will depend on a solar electric propulsion system that captures sunlight with its large solar arrays and then converts it to electric and magnetic fields. These fields accelerate charged atoms of the propellant xenon ,  which is commonly found in plasma televisions on Earth. These atoms, in the form of blue-glowing ionized gas, are then blasted out into space by the Psyche spacecraft's four thrusters, providing the craft with propulsion that looks like something straight out of science fiction. 

    According to NASA, each of these four thrusters operates one at a time, providing a force equivalent to the weight of three quarters in your hand here on Earth — which, in the microgravity and frictionless environment of space, is enough to propel the spacecraft. 

    Even with these revolutionary "Hall-effect thrusters" — which, so far, have been used to get only as far as the moon — the spacecraft's journey to the vicinity of Jupiter won't be a 'straight shot." Instead, it will require a gravity-assisted slingshot maneuver around Mars in 2026, and Psyche will arrive at its metal-rich asteroid target in August 2029.

    The spacecraft will then make orbits of the asteroid at a distance of around 430 miles (700 km), which will decrease as the mission proceeds. The spacecraft will use progressively closer orbital periods ,  or "regimes ,"  to investigate different characteristics of the asteroid.

    During its first orbital regime (A), lasting 56 days, the spacecraft will use its magnetometer to search Psyche for an ancient magnetic field, which would provide evidence that the asteroid was once a planetary body. As the spacecraft does this, its multispectral imager will assess the topography of Psyche's surface. This will continue as the NASA orbiter draws closer to the asteroid, hopefully revealing more details of these characteristics, particularly during the next two orbital regimes (B1 and B2), which will last 192 days. 

    Moving even closer to the asteroid, during the 100-day orbital regime C, Psyche's telecommunications system, which sends data to Earth and receives commands from ground control via radio waves, will be used to investigate the gravitational influence of the metal-rich asteroid. This could help better constrain its mass and density and thus the asteroid's interior composition and structure. 

    During its 100-day orbital regime D, Psyche will employ its gamma-ray neutron spectrometer to get a better picture of the asteroid's surface topology and investigate the chemical elements that are abundant on the asteroid's surface. 

Of major concern to the elites, however, is that the asteroid might be packed with valuable metals: according to a recent Daily Mail article, "scientists think [it] may be packed full of iron, nickel and gold with a value in excess of $10,000 quadrillion (£8,072 quadrillion)." 

    If 16 Psyche is in fact loaded with precious metals, it could be worth an extraordinary amount of money, according to Dr Linda Elkins-Tanton, a space scientist at MIT. 

    She has calculated that the iron in 16 Psyche alone would be worth $10,000 quadrillion (£8,072 quadrillion). 

    Assuming the market for asteroid materials is on Earth, this could cause the value of precious metals to plummet, completely devaluing all holdings including those of governments, and all companies involved in mining, distributing and trading such commodities. 

    Ultimately, it could lead to the collapse of the entire economy.  

So don't expect any government to authorize mining of the asteroid. In fact, bad things might happen to any person or organization that tries to put together such an expedition.