Delays in computer software have repelled the launch of a NASA spacecraft to study what looks like a metal asteroid, which could be the nucleus of a protoplanet that was wrecked in the early days of the solar system by a giant collision.
Now the mission will not start at all this year, NASA announced on Friday.
The completed spacecraft, called the Asteroid Psyche, which is to visit the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, is located in the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and was to be launched from there on August 1 aboard the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. However, the key navigation software for directing and controlling the spacecraft’s movements in space is several months late.
In addition, the test setup, which sends signals to the spacecraft’s computer, making it think it’s already in space, didn’t work properly when engineers tried to fuse components from NASA’s California Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which operates the mission, and Maxar, the company that built the Psyche spacecraft.
The test setup is working now, mission officials said, unaware of software issues. But the debugging process will take weeks to months to complete.
“We’ve just run out of time,” Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University, the mission’s chief researcher, told a news conference on Friday.
Last month, NASA announced that the launch attempt would be postponed no earlier than September 20, not August 1. In order to successfully encounter the asteroid, when the conditions would be best for its study, the mission must start by October 11.
“We looked at many, many options,” said Lori Leshin, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “and even with a very aggressive adjustment, we didn’t feel confident that we would achieve this, that we would successfully reach this window with the mission we were for. confident that we are flying. “
NASA has set up an independent review panel to investigate what went wrong and suggest what needs to be done next. NASA officials said it was too early to know how much the delay would add to the $ 985 million price tag, which includes the launch of the Falcon Heavy. The Review Panel may even recommend canceling the mission.
From radar observations, the asteroid Psyche appears to be ellipsoidal in shape, approximately as wide as Massachusetts. It is also much denser than most asteroids.
The psyche is also very bright, which reinforces suspicions that it is made of metal.
The mission was originally scheduled to launch in 2023, but developments have gone smoothly enough to move the launch date by one year. The revised trajectory would have arrived earlier, in 2026, instead of 2030.
Now the team of the Psyche mission is returning to the consideration of launches in 2023 and 2024, and the spacecraft will not reach the asteroid until 2029 or 2030.
The failure not only slows down Psyche, but also the Janus mission, two small identical spaceships that must be launched for launch before heading to explore two pairs of binary asteroids. The delay from August to September has already confused plans to achieve the initial targets. Now this mission will have to look for other asteroids to visit.
Another NASA mission at the Kennedy Space Center announced better news on Friday. In preparation for the first launch of the Space Launch System, the huge rocket to return astronauts to the moon, NASA engineers are conducting a practical countdown of the rocket to the launch pad, including refueling.
The fourth dress rehearsal attempt, which ended on Monday, counts to 29 seconds. NASA hoped the practice would count to about 9 seconds, just before the engines would start for a real launch. But the constant leak of the fuel connector prevented this.
However, NASA officials have decided that they already have enough data to prepare the rocket for its launch, a mission that will send a capsule, without astronauts on board, on a trip around the moon. This could still happen in late August, officials said, but it is too early to set a more accurate launch date.
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