Psyche!

NASA has announced that its Psyche mission—the agency’s first attempt to study a metal-rich asteroid—will not launch in 2022. The agency states the delay is attributable to the late delivery of guidance, navigation, and flight software, as well as mission-critical test equipment.

In addition to controlling the inflight orientation of the spacecraft, the tardy software was to have provided trajectory information to Psyche’s solar electric propulsion system, which would have begun operating seventy-days post-launch.

The mission’s 2022 launch window, which ran from 01 August through 11 October, would have seen the spacecraft arrive at the asteroid Psyche—from which the exploratory program takes its name—in 2026. The relative orbital positions of Psyche and Earth are such that subsequent launch windows in 2023 and 2024 would not see the spacecraft arrive at the asteroid until 2029 or 2030 respectively.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory Director Laurie Leshin states, “Flying to a distant metal-rich asteroid, using Mars for a gravity assist on the way there, takes incredible precision. We must get it right. Hundreds of people have put remarkable effort into Psyche during this pandemic, and the work will continue as the complex flight software is thoroughly tested and assessed.” Leshin adds, “The decision to delay the launch wasn’t easy, but it is the right one.”

Two projects that were to ride the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket along with Psyche have also been delayed: NASA’s Janus mission, which was to have studied binary asteroid systems, and the Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration, a high-data-rate laser-communications concept that could supersede current means by which ground teams communicate with spacecraft across deep space.

When it does depart, the Psyche spacecraft—which traverses space via ion propulsion rather than traditional, chemical rocket-power—will embark on a 280-million-mile (450-million-kilometer) journey to a 140-mile-wide, oblong chunk of metal and rock within the asteroid-belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Scientists speculate the Psyche asteroid may be the exposed core of a planetesimal—a term describing the small, solid, astronomical objects that orbit a star and form proto-planets through mutual gravitational attraction.

If Psyche truly is a proto-planetary core, studying it would approximate peering within the heart of a fully-formed planet like Earth or El-Adrel. An alternate theory posits Psyche could be a piece of primordial material that never melted.

FMI: https://www.nasa.gov