Context : Asteroid ( 16 ) Psyche is the target of the NASA Psyche mission .
It is considered one of the few main-belt bodies that could be an exposed proto-planetary metallic core and that would thus be related to iron meteorites .
Such an association is however challenged by both its near- and mid-infrared spectral properties and the reported estimates of its density .

Aims : Here , we aim to refine the density of ( 16 ) Psyche to set further constraints on its bulk composition and determine its potential meteoritic analog .

Methods : We observed ( 16 ) Psyche with ESO VLT/SPHERE/ZIMPOL as part of our large program ( ID 199.C-0074 ) .
We used the high angular resolution of these observations to refine Psyche ’ s three-dimensional ( 3D ) shape model and subsequently its density when combined with the most recent mass estimates .
In addition , we searched for potential companions around the asteroid .

Results : We derived a bulk density of 3.99 \pm 0.26 g \cdot cm ^ { -3 } for Psyche .
While such density is incompatible at the 3-sigma level with any iron meteorites ( \sim 7.8 g \cdot cm ^ { -3 } ) , it appears fully consistent with that of stony-iron meteorites such as mesosiderites ( density \sim 4.25 g \cdot cm ^ { -3 } ) .
In addition , we found no satellite in our images and set an upper limit on the diameter of any non-detected satellite of 1460 \pm 200 m at 150 km from Psyche ( 0.2 % \times R _ { Hill } , the Hill radius ) and 800 \pm 200 m at 2,000 km ( 3 % \times R _ { Hill } ) .

Conclusions : Considering that the visible and near-infrared spectral properties of mesosiderites are similar to those of Psyche , there is merit to a long-published initial hypothesis that Psyche could be a plausible candidate parent body for mesosiderites .