Team Shortage Causes NASA To Postpone Important Missions To Asteroids Psyche And Venus

The Psyche Space Aircraft (photo: doc. NASA)

JAKARTA - After delaying its mission to the metal-filled asteroid Psyche, now NASA will also postpone its mission to visit Venus, namely Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy (VERITAS).

The Psyche mission, which was due to launch in August 2022, has been postponed to October 2023, because NASA has yet to test all of the equipment and software for the spacecraft with the asteroid's name.

And to make sure there should be a mission launched, NASA plans to fly the VERITAS mission to Venus. However, again the mission also failed and even delayed up to three years.

After the Psyche mission was canceled, NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) conducted a review of the problems that caused the mission to the asteroid to be delayed.

"We welcome this opportunity to hear the findings of the independent review board and have the opportunity to address this issue," said NASA Science Mission Directorate associate administrator, Thomas Zurbuchen.

“It is our job to notice problems early and resolve them. Information like this helps us more than just solving Psyche, but also for important upcoming missions such as the Europa Clipper and Mars Sample Return."

Launching Digital Trends, Monday, November 7, the report found several issues that caused Psyche to fail to launch, including not enough teams on the project, communication issues and an increase in remote work which meant communication between teams was sluggish.

Seeing this, NASA has then added more teams drawn from other space agency projects. Due to this, the VERITAS mission to Venus, which is still in its early stages of development, has been delayed.

Announced last June, the VERITAS mission aims to map the surface of Venus and learn more about the planet's atmosphere and volcanic activity.

The mission is quite important for understanding how Earth and Venus diverged, as they were once thought to be very similar.

The VERITAS mission was originally planned to launch in 2027, but will now be pushed back to 2031. NASA's other upcoming Venus mission, DAVINCI to drop the spacecraft down through Venus' atmosphere, is still planned for launch in 2029.