Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on general science and climate change.
A NASA probe launched into space Friday on a 2.2-billion-mile journey to a huge, metal-rich space rock in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The Psyche spacecraft lifted off atop one of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rockets at 10:19 a.m. ET from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
“Brace yourself for the mind-blowing revelations it will bring about planetary formation and the birth of rocky planets like our beloved Earth,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Using Earth-based radar and optical telescopes, scientists think the asteroid Psyche was part of the core of a rocky celestial body that never formed into a planet.
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