NASA says Psyche asteroid mission will go forward, targets late-2023 launch

NASA has decided to continue its Psyche asteroid mission after it missed the planned 2022 launch period as a result of mission development problems. The agency is now targeting a launch period opening on October 10, 2023.

Psyche will explore a distant metal-rich asteroid of the same name that orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. With the October 2023 launch, the new spacecraft will arrive at the asteroid in August 2029.

The mission is part of NASA's Discovery Program, a line of low-cost, competitive missions led by a single principal investigator.

"I appreciate the hard work of the independent review board and the JPL-led team toward mission success. The lessons learned from Psyche will be implemented across our entire mission portfolio. I am excited about the science insights Psyche will provide during its lifetime and its promise to contribute to our understanding of our own planet's core," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Our #MissionToPsyche is moving forward. 🚀Following an internal review of mission development issues that caused the team to miss the planned 2022 liftoff to a distant metal-rich asteroid, Psyche is now targeting a launch window that opens Oct. 10, 2023: https://t.co/8WhMci5vrC pic.twitter.com/pqjcFEP6aE

— NASA (@NASA) October 28, 2022

The mission continuation/termination review was informed by a project-proposed mission replan and a separate independent review, commissioned in June by NASA and the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, that investigated causes for the delay. The independent review board is still finalizing its report, which, along with NASA's response, will be shared publicly once complete, the agency said in a press release on Friday.

Additionally, NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) technology demonstration is integrated into the Psyche spacecraft and will continue as planned on the new launch date. The experiment is a sophisticated new laser communication technology to enhance communications speeds and prepare for data-intensive transmissions.