The most powerful telescope launched into space may have shed light on how an asteroid worth $10,000,000,000,000,000,000 came to be.
Last year, NASA launched a spacecraft to investigate one of the largest M-type asteroids ever discovered, named 16 Psyche.
Located 2.2 billion miles away (3.5 billion km) in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, it'll take another five years for the space agency to reach it.
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Measuring 173 miles (280 km) across and 144 miles (232 km) long, with a surface area of 64,000 square miles (165,800 square km), it's 16 Psyche's sheer size that captivated scientists.
What's more, the asteroid is composed of precious - and lucrative - metals, including gold, iron and nickel.
It's so valuable, its discovery could hypothetically make everyone on Earth a billionaire.
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Questions have long surrounded how the unusual asteroid was formed.
Scientists initially thought 16 Psyche was shaped after its exposed metallic core experienced catastrophic collision.
This would've occurred when the asteroid was a protoplanet - a 'whirling mass of gas that rotates around a star'.
But NASA's James Webb Space Telescope picked up on some unexpected evidence that could disprove this theory.
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It found hydrated minerals on the asteroid's surface, suggesting the presence of water.
This could point to 16 Psyche having migrated from beyond the solar system's 'snow line' to its current position on the asteroid belt.
The snow line is the minimum distance from the Sun where temperatures are cool enough for water to freeze.
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Dr. Stephanie Jarmak at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told Forbes: "Our understanding of solar system evolution is closely tied to interpretations of asteroid composition, particularly the M-class asteroids that contain higher concentrations of metal.
"These asteroids were initially thought to be the exposed cores of differentiated planetesimals, a hypothesis based on their spectral similarity to iron meteorites.”
For the uneducated, planetesimals are a rock-type object formed in the early solar system via collisions with other objects.
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These collisions eventually formed larger objects, which became planets.
What's yet to be confirmed, though, is whether 16 Psyche has always contained water, or if its presence was caused by collision.
Dr. Anicia Arredondo, co-author from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, suggested that the asteroid is unlikely to be the leftover core of a protoplanet if it's always held water.
For now, 16 Psyche's origin remains a mystery.
But NASA's mission might one day provide us with the answer - we just might have to wait until the trip ends in 2031.
Topics: NASA, Space, Science, Technology
Ellie Kemp