Formation of Asteroid (16) Psyche by a Giant ImpactOPEN ACCESS 

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Saverio Cambioni, Benjamin P. Weiss, Namya Baijal, Robert Melikyan, Erik Asphaug, John B. Biersteker, Richard P. Binzel, William F. Bottke, Samuel W. Courville, Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, David J. Lawrence, José M. G. Merayo, Carol A. Raymond, Mark A. Wieczorek, Maria T. Zuber

JGR Planets, First Published: 13 January 2026

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“Asteroid (16) Psyche is the largest likely metal-rich asteroid in the Solar System and the target of the NASA Psyche mission. The mission aims to determine whether the asteroid is the core of a differentiated planetesimal that lost its mantle via a giant impact. To prepare for spacecraft observations of the asteroid, we combine impact and geodynamic models to predict the magnetization, composition, and interior structure of a mantle-stripped core with the mass and density of Psyche. We show that Psyche-like bodies can form from a single giant impact, with a hit-and-run collision being the most likely scenario. After the impact, Psyche’s materials could have become magnetized while cooling in a dynamo field generated by its advecting core and/or in the magnetic field of the solar nebula. The former is diagnostic of Psyche being a mantle-stripped core and is favored if Psyche’s primordial sulfur content and current metal content are ≳10 wt.% and ≳50 wt.%, respectively. A sulfur content ≳10 wt.% delays core solidification long enough for kamacite in the asteroid’s exterior to cool through the Curie temperature while the dynamo is still active. Formation of Psyche analogs with ≳50 wt.% metal content requires highly energetic impacts that more favorably occur after nebular-gas dissipation. Therefore, if the Psyche spacecraft’s Magnetometer, Gamma-Ray Neutron Spectrometer, and Gravity and Topography Investigations respectively measure strong (>2×10^14 Am²) magnetization, sulfur-rich surface provinces compatible with a bulk primordial sulfur content ≳10 wt.%, and metal content ≳50 wt.%, Psyche most likely formed as a mantle-stripped core.”

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