A software failure has delayed Psyche, a NASA mission to explore a metal-rich asteroid. Two small probes are included in the launch, but the postponement means they may not be able to meet their respective target asteroids.
Psyche, a spacecraft designed to explore the unusual metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche, is currently being prepared at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Mission engineers recently detected an anomaly that caused a delay in launch.
“One problem is preventing confirmation that the software that controls the spacecraft is working as planned,” NASA said in a May 24 press release. “The team is working to identify and correct the problem. To allow more time for this work, the release period is being updated to September 20, 2022, pending the availability of the range.”
The launch of Psyche was scheduled for early August, but this small delay is causing a major problem for Janus mission planners: a project to explore two unrelated binary asteroids. The twin probes join Psyche for the same launch of SpaceX Falcon Heavy, but the delay means that the mission will not go as planned, as explained in a session by Dan Scheeres, principal investigator of the project and astronomer at the University of Colorado. of the NASA Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG) on Wednesday.
The Janus project is one of three missions planned under NASA’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx-2) program, the other two being Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE) and Lunar Trailblazer. For the $ 55 million ($ 76 million) mission, the suitcase-sized Janus spacecraft was designed to meet two pairs of binary asteroids, designated 1996 FG3 and 1991 VH .
Scheeres and colleagues hope to study the complex orbital dynamics of binary asteroids and create accurate models of the two systems, which they would do using a set of probe-mounted cameras. By studying asteroids up close, scientists will gain a better understanding of the early solar system and gain important insights that could improve planetary defense strategies against near-Earth threatening objects.
“The Janus mission, as conceived and proposed at NASA, will give us information about how asteroid debris evolves over time,” Scheeres told me in an email. “There are fundamental questions about how small piles of weak, time-bound debris change over time, which has implications for a number of phenomena in the solar system, from the protoplanetary disk to planetary rings to the subsequent effects of catastrophic disruptions “.
The Janus mission, or at least the original iteration of the mission, was to provide new data on these processes and properties. Scheeres said a modified mission could still address these issues, but with reduced resolutions.
According to the original parameters of the mission, the Janus spacecraft were scheduled to make a series of overflights of the Earth to meet the asteroids in four years, but Scheeres said that the delayed launch means that these critical overflights are no longer possible. . “Our spacecraft was designed to be launched during August; it allowed us to be properly programmed to reach our target asteroids,” Scheeres wrote. “The landslide in September makes that moment impossible, except for a few days.” That said, “there are launch days when we can fly over our original targets,” he told Gizmodo, but “most days we can’t reach them,” adding that the best case scenario would be to launch those”. days we can get there “.
Scheeres and his colleagues are in the middle of locating other asteroids that are “scientifically interesting that we could reach other days of the launch period,” he said. “We should just refocus our scientific goals.” A potential target, the 1996 FG3, could be achieved by the two Janus spacecraft if Psyche were launched between October 7 and 10, according to SpaceNews. But as a shared travel mission, the team “has no ability to influence the launch dates or the orientation of the launch vehicle, and that arises from our status as a shared trip,” Scheeres noted in the SBAG meeting.
This is the fate of car-sharing users, who need to be on the lookout and see how situations get out of their control. “It’s frustrating, of course,” he told me. “However, these are the rules for shared travel, so it’s not like we don’t know this could happen.” In fact, taking a rocket ride makes low-cost space missions possible, but it’s not risk-free. Speaking to SBAG meeting attendees, Scheeres said shared travel partners should make their voices heard, adding that some considerations should be made “for small adjustments to release dates.”
As for getting out of the Psyche mission and finding a new launch provider, Scheeres says this is not taken into account. He said no known future release could accommodate and meet the needs of Janus’ shared travel mission. That’s unless someone is willing to fund an independent release, which doesn’t seem to be on the charts. Space is difficult, as the saying goes, but in this case the problem is to get to space on time.
More: NASA’s latest plan to fix the Trojan spacecraft’s unblocked solar array shows signs of promise.
Editor’s Note: Release dates for this article are based in the US, but will be updated with local Australian dates as soon as we know more.