Cape Canaveral, June 25 (BUS): SA suspended an asteroid mission on Friday, blaming delays in the delivery of its navigation software, according to the Associated Press.
The Psyche mission was supposed to launch to a strange metal asteroid of the same name in September or October. But the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was several months behind in the delivery of its navigation, guidance and control programs — an important part of any spacecraft. Officials said engineers “just ran out of time” to test it.
Now the space agency will step back, and an independent review will look at what went wrong, when the spacecraft might be launched again, and even if it should move forward, said Laurie Glaese, chief of NASA’s planetary science division.
NASA has already spent $717 million on Psyche and its projected total cost, including the rocket to launch, is $985 million.
The small, car-sized spacecraft was originally supposed to reach its asteroid in 2026 after a journey spanning more than a billion miles.
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