In 2017, the American space agency NASA announced the Psyche asteroid mission and was scheduled to launch this summer, in an attempt to explore the metallic asteroid, a unique fortified celestial body (asteroid) located between Mars and Jupiter. It is worth about 10 quintillion dollars (a quintillion is a number equal to a million trillion).
The project had been touted as a great opportunity to study a world vastly different from ours, while we hope to unlock some clues about the origins of our universe, but now that effort appears to be in trouble, a NASA update reveals that the mission is under review and may be canceled in the end.
NASA said the evaluation intends to examine the project and related institutional issues that have led to alleged software-related delays for the unmanned spacecraft that was supposed to blast off to the unique asteroid.
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“The review considers workforce environment factors, culture, communication, schedule, technical and program risks, and the results of this study will help inform an ongoing review or termination of the mission altogether,” the agency added.
Reaching the asteroid Psyche is no easy task. The spacecraft is supposed to launch into space aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, a slingshot around Mars, and then make a three-year journey to the distant asteroid, where it was supposed to spend 21 months in Transfer the images to NASA scientists heading to Earth.
A lot of money has already been spent on this project, and since this potential cancellation follows a flurry of other notable delays with respect to the very expensive Artemis missions, the project to return humans to the lunar surface, it’s probably fair to assume that the agency is some pretty frustrated. , according to a report published by the website futurism.