NASA’s probe will launch Friday and head for Psyche, an object 2.2 billion miles (3.5 billion kilometers) away that could provide clues about the interiors of planets like Earth.

“We have visited stone worlds, ice worlds and gas worlds in person or with robots… but this will be the first time we visit a world with a metal surface,” said lead scientist Lindy Elkins-Tanton. she told reporters during a briefing this week.

NASA and SpaceX plan to launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center at 10:19 ET (14:19 GMT) on Friday, with a backup window on Saturday if weather conditions are not cooperative. The minibus-sized probe is expected to reach its target in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter in July 2029.

Examining the cores of rocky planets

Over the next two years, it will use its advanced suite of instruments to search for evidence of an ancient magnetic field, examine its chemical composition, and study Psyche’s minerals and topography.

Scientists believe Psyche, named after the goddess of souls in Greek mythology, may be part of the iron-rich core of the “planetary”, the building block of all rocky planets. It could also be something else; remnants of a primitive iron-rich Solar System object that has not yet been documented.

“This is the only way to see the nucleus,” Elkins-Tanton said. “We pay lip service to going to outer space to explore inner space.”

Psyche is thought to have an irregular, potato-like shape, measuring 173 miles (280 kilometers) across at its widest point, although it has never been seen up close before. Until recently, scientists thought it was mostly metal, but analysis based on reflected radar and light now shows that it is probably 30 to 60 percent metal, with the rest rock.

solar electric motor

The mission will include many technological innovations. The Psyche spacecraft, named after the asteroid, will test next-generation communications based on lasers instead of radio waves; NASA likens it to upgrading old phone lines on Earth to fiber optics.

Abi Biswas from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement that the system, called Deep Space Optical Communications, was “designed to demonstrate data throughput 10 to 100 times that of today’s most advanced radio systems in space.”

Psyche also uses a special type of propulsion system called “Hall effect engines,” which use energy from solar panels to create electric and magnetic fields, which then eject charged atoms of xenon gas.

The pulling force it creates is roughly the weight of an AA battery in your hand. But in the vacuum of space, a spacecraft will constantly reach speeds of tens of thousands of kilometers per hour. Such systems eliminate the need to transport thousands of pounds of chemical propellant into space and will be the first time Psyche has been used beyond lunar orbit.