Theminerals contained in asteroid 16 Psyche are said to be worth $700 quintillionat current prices which is enough to give everyone on the planet $93 billion.
Accordingto reports, 16 Psyche and other asteroids will probably be mined for theirmetals but once those metals start hitting the market in large quantities, theyare unlikely to be precious for much longer.
Somethinglike a golden asteroid happened once before. It was about in about 1500 that Spainconquered South and Central America and discovered large deposits of gold andsilver. These metals were being shipped back to Europe and used them to pay forgovernment expenditures mostly wars as gold and silver were used as money atthat time. But at present these metals are no longer used as money nor are thevalue of modern money pegged to the value of gold or any other metal. And therefore,the arrival of the giant asteroid would probably not cause consumer prices togo up and would instead simply cause gold prices to crash to almost zero.
Thisresulted that a giant asteroid won't make us all billionaires.
However,a golden asteroid owner could conceivably try to pull a similar trick bylaunching advertising campaigns to get people to start using gold for morethings, building materials, perhaps, or clothing.
Theimpossibility of extracting untold riches from 16 Psyche teaches two importantlessons about how wealth really works.
NASA also announced that it will be launching a mission 'Discovery Mission' to the asteroid and the mission is expected to be ready by 2022 for launch. It's estimated that it will arrive at the asteroid by 31 January 2026 but not before they make a fly-by of Mars in 2023.
This object is over 200 km(120 mi) in diameter and contains a little less than 1% of the mass of theentire asteroid belt.
