HOUSTON—NASA is progressing toward an October launch of Psyche, an approximately $1 billion science mission to orbit a metal-rich, main-belt asteroid that could provide new clues about the Earth’s core and planet-forming processes across the universe. 

This is according to an update from an independent review board (IRB) convened last year to assess factors that contributed to a delay in the initial August 2022 launch plan. The slip led to a 19% increase in the development cost, to $814 million from $682 million, according to NASA’s 2024 budget request, and had an impact on other planetary science missions.

Psyche’s launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center now is planned for between Oct. 5 and 22.

“We believe Psyche is on a positive course for an October 2023 launch. We believe the 2023 launch readiness date is credible, and overall probability of mission success is high,” IRB Chairman Tom Young told a June 5 NASA news briefing.

“We are really not afraid at NASA to take an unflinching view at what we do,” Nicola Fox, NASA’s recently appointed Science Mission Directorate (SMD) associate administrator, told the briefing. “These issues are something that we must really take seriously as well as the industry as a whole. We certainly don’t feel we can rest or ever believe that the issues have gone away or will go away. What we really feel here is that we have started to change and this change must continue in order to address our issues of workforce oversight and planning.”

The 16-member IRB attributed the 2022 launch delay to a number of factors that prompted late delivery of the flight software and testing equipment. They included staffing shortages, a lack of personnel with sufficient experience at all organizational levels, poor communications, hybrid work schedules, operational readiness and shortcomings in programmatic metrics.

The development effort is being led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Arizona State University and Maxar Technologies. While tha panel traced many of the concerns to institutional issues at JPL and the center’s governance by Caltech, the COVID-19 pandemic also contributed. 

The initial November 2022 IRB report included 13 recommendations presented to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and JPL. They agreed to all of the recommendations.

As part of the news briefing, Fox said the “lessons learned’ and follow-up IRB assessment were being shared across NASA to help meet schedules and cost targets associated with other projects.

With about 18 weeks to go prior to the new launch date, the response effort has allowed about seven weeks of schedule margin, JPL Director Laurie Leshin told the news briefing. “We are going to continue to make ourselves better,” she stressed. “With actions sustainable into the future.” 

The journey to Psyche, a 141-mi.-wide (226-km) chunk of rock, iron and nickel in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is to include a 2026 Mars flyby. This will be a gravitational assist to set up arrival at its target asteroid destination in August 2029. The arrival will start a 26-month science phase as the Smart car-sized Psyche probe circles what may once have been the core of a larger planetary body that lost its outer layers through impacts with other asteroids and comets.

Psyche also will exercise and demonstrate technologies of value to deep-space exploration, including efforts to establish a sustained human presence at the Moon under the Artemis program to prepare for expeditions to Mars.

Those include a Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) system that will test the use of lasers to communicate with mission support teams on Earth, in addition to the standard radio communications. DSOC data from the spacecraft will be encoded in photons, or light particles, for transmission.

Psyche also will employ solar-powered, xenon-fueled Hall thrusters for electric propulsion, a fuel-efficient technology for deep-space exploration.