NASA scientists want to visit the "metal world" which is produced by a massive planetary hit and run, according to recent reports.
The massive asteroid, known as 16 Psyche, is thought to be molten core of a planet once the size of Mars, but was stripped of its rocky mantle by a series of massive collisions and slowly cooled into a solid mass of iron and nickel.
The asteroid is so unusual that the NASA is considering sending a separate spaceship to study it.
"Psyche is by far the largest metal object in the whole solar system," said Benjamin Weiss, professor of Planetary Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The asteroid is thought to be the exposed iron core of a battered and stripped protoplanet.
"Psyche would be the first and only metal world to be visited by humanity. This is true exploration," he added.
Psyche lies between Jupiter and Mars, orbiting around 280 miles and is regarded as one of the largest known asteroid, about 125 miles in diameter.
The property that makes it unique is that it is among the densest bodies ever found in the solar system.
"All the physical measurements - from radio telescopes bouncing waves off the body - indicate that it consists largely of iron and nickel," said Linda Elkins-Tanton, a geologist and the director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University.
"Psyche looks like it is a stripped-naked planetary core, a remnant of the hit-and-run collisions that disrupted the early solar system."
The process began 4.6 billion years ago, as a cloud of dust and gas left behind when earlier stars reached the end of their lives and exploded began to fuse.
If selected, the Psyche mission could be ready to launch relatively quickly because it requires no new technology development, Elkins-Tanton said. The spacecraft would be based to a large degree on NASA's Dawn probe, which is currently on its way to the dwarf planet Ceres after wrapping up a 14-month campaign at another giant body in the asteroid belt, the protoplanet Vesta.
According to Mirror reports, NASA's final decision on sending a probe to the asteroid will be made in the next few weeks - it could be launched within two to three years, arriving in 2021.
