A mission to an asteroid will have to wait a while. It was scheduled to head for space as early as next week. But a series of technical problems has kept it on the ground for at least another year. The spacecraft is named for its asteroid target: Psyche. The asteroid is in the asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It’s shaped like a potato, with an average diameter of about 140 miles. It could be a fragment of the core of a small planet that was blasted apart in a long-ago collision. That idea is based on Psyche’s composition — it contains a lot of iron and nickel. In fact, it’s the largest of all the known metal-rich asteroids. Scientists are especially interested in it because it could have formed in the same way as Earth did, and it could provide a peek into a planetary core that we can’t get here at home. The Psyche spacecraft is about the size of a Smart Car, with solar panels big enough to cover a tennis court. It’ll use ion power to maneuver — electric thrusters
