Two small spacecraft now sailing through the solar system were supposed to be on their way to study unexplored asteroids, but after several years of development and nearly $50 million spent, NASA announced Tuesday that the two probes will remain locked inside Lockheed Martin’s facility in Colorado.
That’s because the mission, called Janus, was scheduled to launch last year as a backpack on the same rocket with NASA’s much larger Psyche spacecraft, which will fly to a 140-mile (225-kilometer) mineral-rich asteroid called Psyche–for more than two years. Close observation. Problems with software testing on the Psyche spacecraft prompted NASA officials to delay the launch by more than a year.
An independent review group created to analyze the reasons for the delay in launching Psyche identified issues with the spacecraft software and weaknesses in the Psyche pre-launch test plan. Digging deeper, the review team determined that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the Psyche mission, was saddled with personnel and workforce issues exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Psyche is now back on track for the launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in October, but Janus won’t be on board.
Janus was designed to fly in two binary asteroids – made up of two bodies close together – orbiting the sun near Earth by the metallic asteroid Psyche. While the Psyche mission could still reach its asteroid destination and complete its science mission with its launch this year, the asteroids targeted by Janus will change their position in the solar system significantly since last year. The two Janus spacecraft could no longer reach them without flying away from the Sun so that their solar arrays could generate enough power.
When it became clear that the two Janus target asteroids were no longer reachable, Janus team scientists and NASA management agreed last year to remove the twin spacecraft from the Psyche launch. Scientists looked at other uses for the suitcase-sized Janus spacecraft, which had already been built and was just weeks away from the Florida mission to begin final launch preparations when NASA decided to delay the launch of Psyche.
One of the ideas for reusing the Janus spacecraft was to send probes flying by the asteroid Apophis, a space rock larger than the Empire State Building that will invade within 2,029 miles (32,000 kilometers) of our planet’s surface in 2029. For a brief period after that, scientists discovered 2004 reported that there is a small chance of Apophis colliding with Earth in 2029 or later in this century, but astronomers have now ruled out any risk of collisions with Earth in the next 100 years.
It’s about money
In the end, Janus fell victim to Psyche mission delays and NASA’s strict budget constraints. On Tuesday, the agency said it had directed the Janus team to “prepare the spacecraft for long-term storage.”
“NASA reviewed several potential opportunities and requirements for alternative missions using the dual spacecraft, with a primary focus on asteroid science,” said Erik Jansson, deputy director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, in a written response to questions from Ars. However, limited resources over the next few years led to a decision not to pursue either of these alternatives for the time being.
NASA’s planetary science budget is being strained by the rising costs of several missions already planned, including a multi-billion dollar sample return project to Mars, which is still in an early stage of development. The sample return mission aims to retrieve samples of Martian rocks and return them to Earth for analysis. According to Tom Statler, an official in NASA’s Planetary Science Division, the Europa Clipper mission, which is being finalized for launch next year, has also seen costs rise.
President Biden’s budget deal for a debt ceiling last month and congressional Republicans placed caps on federal spending likely affect overall funding levels for NASA.
“We’re looking forward to a rough time, and everyone should be aware of that,” Statler said Tuesday at a meeting of the Small Bodies Advisory Group, which represents the asteroid science community. “The budget is definitely not in favor of looking at new beginnings (for planetary science missions) at the moment.”
NASA has not ruled out using a dual asteroid probe on a future mission if funding is available, but Ianson said, “There are no current plans to use these spacecraft.”
According to Ianson, NASA has spent nearly $50 million on the Janus mission since the agency formally approved its development in 2020. This funding represents the majority of the original project’s $55 million cost cap.
It’s unusual, but not unprecedented, for NASA to cancel a science mission after spending a lot of money, but disruptions are usually caused by cost overruns or insurmountable technical problems with the spacecraft. In the case of Janus, engineers were evaluating a problem that was revealed during ground tests of the spacecraft’s electrical thrusters. Propulsion system concerns limited alternative missions available for NASA to review after a launch delay last year, but Janus’ science team was confident the problem wasn’t an issue for a potential backup mission to Apophis.
NASA selected the Janus mission proposal from a science team led by principal investigator Dan Sheres of the University of Colorado. Janus was part of NASA’s SIMPLEx program, which stands for Innovative Small Planet Exploration Missions. SIMPLEx was created to provide NASA funding for relatively low-cost robotic missions to explore the solar system, taking advantage of the trend of smaller spacecraft, miniature instruments and flight launch opportunities.
Two more SIMPLEx missions are scheduled by NASA at the same time as Janus approaches launch. One of the missions, called the Lunar Trailblazer, will launch a trip to the Moon using a commercial lander from Intuitive Machines. The other project is called EscaPADE, which will fly to Mars to study the Red Planet’s atmosphere and magnetosphere.
NASA assumes smaller planetary science missions are riskier than more expensive solar system probes, such as the Psyche mission, which has a budget of more than $1.1 billion after delaying its launch by a year.
Under the new flight plan, the Psyche spacecraft will fly by Mars to perform a gravity-assisted maneuver for launch into the asteroid belt, where it will rendezvous with and orbit the asteroid Psyche in August 2029. Scientists hypothesize that the asteroid Psyche may be the leftover nickel-iron core from a failed planet that destroyed it in the solar system. Messy old.
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