Recently NASA, said that its mission, which was named Psyche after the asteroid the mission was targeting has been now rescheduled to October 2023. The launch was supposed to happen in 2022 but it got missed due to the late delivery of key components of the spacecraft, including the flight software and testing equipment. The launch window for this year concluded on October 11.
NASA selected Psyche in 2017 to investigate a previously unexplored metal-rich asteroid of the same name. It is part of the agency's Discovery Programme, a line of low-cost, competitive missions led by a single principal investigator.
In addition to a separate independent review commissioned by the agency to examine the failures that led to missing the launch window in 2022, NASA also conducted an internal review to determine whether the mission could launch in 2023. It appears that the review determined that next year’s launch is a go. While the time of launch has changed, NASA said that the flight profile of the mission would be the same.
The mission is being led by Arizona State University and aims at exploring the metal asteroid dubbed “Psyche” located between Mars and Jupiter. It was chosen for exploration because scientists believe it is the nickel-iron core of an earlier planet, making it a rich target for understanding how the earth came into existence.
The total cost of the mission, including the launch, is around $985 million, and as of now $717 million has been spent.
Along with Psyche, two additional projects were scheduled, a NASA mission called Janus, which aims to explore a twin binary asteroid system, which has been integrated with the Psyche spacecraft and might launch it with Psyche, but NASA is still exploring options.
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