The first launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy for NASA was delayed by seven weeks following spacecraft engineers discovered a software anomaly during initial processing.
Named for the strange metallic asteroid designed to study it, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft completed its journey from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, to the launch facilities at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in late April. To date, Falcon Heavy is the first and only payload to actually reach Kennedy Space Center since mid-2019. At the time of its arrival, it was still somewhat unclear when Falcon Heavy would finally end its three-year launch break or what the payload(s) would be would that will be above the rocket for the event.
Three weeks later, the two are still not clear, but now for different reasons.
On May 23, Spaceflight Now reported that it had received a written statement from NASA confirming that the launch of Psyche had been pushed back from August 1, 2022 to no later than (NET) September 20, “following ground crews in testing software had discovered a problem on the spacecraft.” From the spacecraft to the payload handling facility at Kennedy Space Center, the teams have spent the last few weeks combing through Psyche and making sure it made the flight without problems. At some unknown point, engineers had to run the spacecraft’s computers for extensive diagnostic testing. It’s also possible that a later build of Psyche’s flight software was analyzed externally before final installation.
Either way, something went wrong. For now, NASA just wants to say that “there is an issue preventing confirmation that the software controlling the spacecraft is working as designed.” While it appears to be software-centric, such a vague statement doesn’t rule out the possibility of a hardware problem, which might explain why NASA and the spacecraft team quickly decided to delay Psyche’s launch by more than seven weeks.
For reasons unknown, each Falcon Heavy’s short-range payload slipped significantly from its original launch target. In recent weeks, USSF-44 – which was due to launch in June 2022 following years of delays – “Infinitely delayed.Delayed as of Q3 2020, USSF-52 now release planned October 2022. Fisat-3, scheduled to launch on Falcon Heavy in 2020, is now .NET September 2022. Jupiter-3, a The Etisalat satellite breaks the record It was only confirmed as the Falcon Heavy’s launch contract a few weeks ago and was recently rolled back from 2021 and 2022 to early 2023.
Only USSF-67, whose official launch target hasn’t been updated in over a year, is it said It’s still on track to launch somewhere within the original launch window (H2 2022). If it were actually launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket without delay in November 2022, that would be quite a long way to go. Meanwhile, the September 20 delay of Psyche means it may now conflict with Falcon Heavy’s ViaSat-3 mission, which must use the same launcher. Most likely, ViaSat-3 would slip into Q4 already, but the situation shows what planning painful launches of nearly half a dozen chronically delayed payloads should be like for SpaceX.
Meanwhile, SpaceX needs to save and maintain it too neun Various Falcon Heavy Boosters as they have to wait a long time for their assigned missions. SpaceX’s entire fleet of operational Falcon 9s — including a Falcon Heavy booster provisionally operating as Falcon 9 — contains 12 boosters, meaning more than 40% of all Falcon boosters are currently heavyweights.
