Linda Elkins-Tanton of the Carnegie Institute recently proposed a mission to visit the core of a proto-planet that was long ago stripped of its rocky outsides and cast adrift in the solar system.

Asteroid 16 Psyche is much like Earth's core, but its soft outer layers have been stripped away by other incoming asteroids.

Elkins-Tanton refers to the asteroid as "a little refrigerator magnet in space." This could have an effect on how the spacecraft or satellite will be designed for the visit, and the bizarre landscapes that might be found on the asteroid also sound spectacular. Simulations of how the asteroid might have lost its outer layers suggest, for example, "that Psyche's craters could have dramatic rims that froze in splash-like patterns." The scientists studying it describe it as a "metal world."

"A mission there is the only way that humankind will ever visit the core of any body," Elkins-Tanton said, adding that Psyche could teach us a lot about how planets work. "We can learn about the building blocks of the planets in the first million years of the solar system in a way that we can't do any other way."

We pray the metal spaceship doesn't get stuck to this magnificent magnetic asteroid.

[New Scientist]