Psyche lives!
rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, as previously planned. But the one-year delay will have consequences for the mission.target in early 2026. But a 2023 launch requires a different trajectory, pushing the arrival back to August 2029, NASA officials said.
And NASA's Janus smallsat mission, which is designed to study two separate binary asteroid systems, now may not ride to space with Psyche, as it would have on a 2022 launch."NASA continues to assess options" for Janus, officials wrote in Friday's statement. The delay could also have budgetary implications. The mission has a total life-cycle cost of $985 million, $717 million of which. Some belt-tightening might be needed to stretch the dollars over the extra years necessitated by the new plan.
An artist's concept depicts the 140-mile-wide asteroid Psyche, which lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.