Asteroid being captured by NASA worth $10,000,000,000,000,000,000 would make everyone on Earth a billionaire

A rocket was launched as part of NASA's most recent mission to reach "one of the most intriguing objects in the main asteroid belt," which has the potential to enrich everyone on Earth.

The space agency successfully launched a rocket last Friday, October 13, with the intention of traveling to the metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche.

Gold, iron, and nickel are all abundant on the asteroid; its estimated cumulative worth is $10,000,000,000,000,000,000, or $10,000 quadrillion/£8,000 quadrillion.

Every individual on the globe would effectively become a billionaire if NASA were to mine the asteroid and bring it back to Earth.

In actuality, though, if scientists carried out their plan, the global economy would collapse—it would be similar to everyone on the planet winning the lottery.

It's fortunate that NASA has stated that mining the asteroid is not their goal. According to the space agency, the project was started with the goal of learning more about planetary cores and the formation of planets.

A press release issued by NASA in July stated: "With less than 100 days to go before its launch, teams of engineers and technicians are working almost around the clock to ensure the orbiter is ready to journey 2.5 billion miles to a metal-rich asteroid that may tell us more about planetary cores and how planets form."

"At a distance ranging from 235 million to 309 million miles (378 million to 497 million kilometers) from the Sun," according to NASA, the asteroid circles the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.

According to scientific estimates, the spacecraft is expected to arrive at the asteroid in July 2029 and will experience a little acceleration upon passing Mars in May 2026.

"A multispectral imager, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, a magnetometer, and a radio instrument (for gravity measurement) will be used by the spacecraft to map and investigate Psyche once it is in orbit,” NASA continued.

NASA selected 16 Psyche above the other nine known metal-rich asteroids in our solar system because it is the biggest and least likely to have undergone changes from space collisions.

According to Nicola Fox, the associate administrator for NASA's science mission directorate, "Psyche is by far the largest, and that's why we want to go to it because the smaller ones are more likely to have changed by things impacting them," Space.com was told by Fox.