NASA’s Psyche asteroid mission will not launch in 2022 because there was not enough time to complete testing of the spacecraft’s software before its 2022-10-11 launch window closes.
JPL estimated that completing the necessary testing for Psyche would have taken weeks to months.
Psyche’s delay will affect Janus, a rideshare mission planned to launch with Psyche that is designed to fly by binary asteroids.
The Government Accountability Office assessment released on 2022-06-22 reported Psyche’s cost as $965.6 million, which is 3.1% below its baseline cost commitment of $996,400,000.
An earlier delay of Psyche’s launch from 2022-08-01 to no earlier than 2022-09-20 already disrupted Janus by preventing the Earth flybys it needed to reach its original destinations.
The Psyche project and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory concluded that Psyche did not have a path to launch with acceptable risk in the 2022 opportunity.
The launch of Psyche was delayed from early August to no earlier than 2022-09-20, which prevents Janus from using its original trajectory for flybys of two binary asteroids.
Maxar built the Psyche spacecraft bus.
NASA set Psyche’s launch to no earlier than 2022-09-20 to provide more time for testing the spacecraft’s software.
The last NASA agency update for Psyche, published 2022-05-02, described the spacecraft’s shipment from JPL to the Kennedy Space Center to begin launch preparations on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy.
At the time of selection, Psyche was scheduled to launch in 2023 and arrive at the main-belt asteroid Psyche in 2030.
NASA selected Psyche in January 2017 as one of two Discovery-class planetary science missions alongside the Lucy mission.
NASA delayed the launch of the Psyche spacecraft previously scheduled for 2022-08-01 until no earlier than 2022-09-20 to address a software problem.
The Psyche spacecraft will test a payload called Deep Space Optical Communication that uses lasers to provide high-bandwidth communications with Earth.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory mission website still listed an 2022-08-01 launch for Psyche as of early 2022-05-24.
The Artemis 1 launch would need to work around the Falcon Heavy launch of the Psyche asteroid mission, which has a short launch window that opens at the beginning of August 2024.
The SEP Chassis built for Psyche is Maxar’s lightest and smallest graphite 1300-class spacecraft platform.
Psyche was selected in 2017 as the 14th mission under NASA’s Discovery Program.
Maxar will test the deployment of Psyche’s two perpendicular cross panels using specialized equipment at its facilities.
Only one of Psyche’s twin 37-foot-long (11.3-meter-long) solar arrays can be deployed at a time in JPL’s High Bay 2 clean room because of their length.