“Psyche is on a positive track for the October 2023 launch. The launch preparation date is reliable and the mission is likely to be successful overall.” This was announced at a phone press briefing today by Psyche Independent Review Board (IRB) Chairman Tom Young, who told NASA last summer that Psyche’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) mission management will continue to confirm that the spacecraft will remain the same as originally planned by August 2022. It was summoned by NASA after it admitted it would not be ready to launch for the metal-rich asteroid named after it.

An IRB review of Psyche found that the causes of the launch delay went far beyond Psyche’s mission. Last November, the IRB published a report strongly criticizing JPL’s own corporate governance and Caltech’s oversight of the issue. The GCC found issues with understaffing, workforce retention, internal communication, management oversight, and more. These issues not only contributed to Psyche missing its launch date, but many other missions under construction at JPL including NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization’s Synthetic Aperture (NISAR) mission, Venus Radiation Mission, Radio Science, InSAR also threatened. Orbiter for Topography and Spectroscopy (VERIT AS) and Europa Clipper.

In response to the November IRB report, NASA suspended work on VERITAS to relieve pressure on JPL’s overstretched workforce, causing future Venus exploration plans by both NASA and ESA to fail. NASA has given JPL’s new director, Laura Leshin, five months to spin the ship before the board re-registers. On May 30, the IRB provided NASA with its assessment of JPL’s progress and made its report public today.

Young said during a briefing today that both the JPL and Psyche team “completely exceeded expectations” at the time. “The IRB acknowledged that implementation of the JPL’s corporate guidelines will take some time,” and while there is “a lot of work to be done” in some areas, “progress has been impressive.”

For example, NISAR was delivered on time, and aggressive recruiting and retention efforts now have the Psyche and Europa Clipper teams fully engaged. (Among other improvements, JPL now offers 8 weeks of paid parental leave for the first time.) As for Psyche, Leshin reports that the Psyche team “nearly passed all major software tests, which was the main reason for the delay.

“With 18 weeks to launch, there are 7 weeks to spare. It is extremely unfortunate that management problems of JPL, not technical problems in space exploration, have caused a one-year delay on the Psyche mission and at least a four-year delay. VERITAS, four female-led NASA so far Lindy Elkins-Tanton will see her team’s mission launch this October, but a long delay with VERITAS is preventing it from fulfilling its planned reconnaissance role until NASA’s DAVINCI atmospheric probe and ESA’s EnVision orbiter arrive. Time will tell if NASA finds VERITAS justified or even sustainable when it coincides with EnVision.