16 Psyche is about 324 million miles away, or four years by spaceship

Somewhere far away hurtling through space is a giant ball thought to be made from enough metal to make everyone on Earth a billionaire.

It may seem fitting then that the man chosen to help humanity reach it is Elon Musk. Nasa has named SpaceX, the billionaire’s space exploration firm, to help it to explore the asteroid called 16 Psyche.

American scientists have said that the body, probably once the core of a planet, contains iron worth £8,000 quadrillion. A quadrillion is one followed by 15 zeros. Shared among the world’s nearly eight billion people, this would amount to about £1 billion each.

There is no plan to bring it back, but researchers’ interest in it stems from its similarities to other planets.

Scientists