The NASA Psyche Mission: The First up-Close Exploration of a Metal-Rich WorldOPEN ACCESS 

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James F. Bell III, Lindy Elkins-Tanton & Carol A. Polanskey

Space Science Reviews, Volume 222, article number 5, Published: 03 January 2026

Editorial Notes of the collection “The NASA Psyche Mission: Science Instruments and Investigations”

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“The main belt asteroid (16) Psyche was discovered in 1852 at the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte in Naples, Italy by Annibale de Gasparis, who named the new minor planet after the eponymous Greek goddess. Over the more than 220 years since, astronomers have discovered that Psyche is the largest and most massive of the so-called “M Class” asteroids, with average visible to near-IR colors and spectral properties similar to those of many of the metallic meteorites in the world’s collections. Indeed, Psyche is now thought to singularly comprise roughly 1% of the mass of the main belt, and to have among the highest densities of any known asteroid (∼4.1 g/cm3). […]”

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