NASA asteroid mission on hold due to late software delivery

The asteroid mission was put on hold due to the late delivery of its own navigation software.

The Psyche mission was supposed to launch in the fall. The software for navigation, guidance and control was late by several months. The engineers ran out of time to test it.

NASA's planetary sciences chief said that the space agency is going to step back, and an independent review will look at what went wrong when the spaceship could launch again.

The total cost of Psyche, including the rocket to launch it, is almost a billion dollars. After a journey of more than one billion miles, the small car-sized spaceship was supposed to arrive at its asteroid in the year of 2026.

The Psyche mission lead scientist said that there are no known problems with the craft now that the software has arrived.

She said that there was one challenge that they couldn't overcome in time.

Laurie Leshin, director of the JPL, said there are at least two launch opportunities next year to get to the asteroid that sits between Mars and Jupiter. Psyche would not reach its asteroid until 2029 or 2030.

It's difficult to calculate launch times because the mission needs the proper sunlight conditions and the asteroid is spinning like a chicken.

NASA is looking at what to do with the two small missions that were going to ride on the rocket.

NASA has a fleet of asteroid-exploring spaceships. Osiris-Rex is going to come back to Earth. Last year, NASA launched the ships Lucy and Dart to explore other space rocks and test if a rocket could hit an asteroid and cause it to miss Earth.

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