back to article NASA reassigns Venus boffins to save short-staffed asteroid interceptor

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory failed to launch the Psyche asteroid-visiting mission originally scheduled later this year due to an "imbalance between the workload and the available workforce," it admitted in an independent report released late last week. The plan to send an orbital spacecraft to 16 Psyche – the largest Type …

  1. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Mushroom

    metallic core of a failed protoplanet

    I am not an astrophysicist... but I do rather wonder how such a thing failed. To have got as far as having a core, it must have been a fairly large mass; a planet or planetoid in its own right? Do they thing something smacked into it and blew it to bits in the finest Star Wars fashion.

    Educate me?

    1. Twanky
      Boffin

      Re: metallic core of a failed protoplanet

      Me too. I don't think planet formation starts by aggregating a core and then layering on the other stuff. As far as my limited understanding goes, the core forms when enough material has stuck together and remained hot enough for the heavy bits to sink into the middle.

      1. DJO Silver badge

        Re: metallic core of a failed protoplanet

        I think it starts off as a loose agglomeration where the heavier material migrates to the center before it compresses into a more solid lump.

        If while still loose it gets too close to something big like Jupiter it risks being ripped into bits again - this is pretty much how the asteroid belt was formed - anything growing too big gets torn apart by Jupiter. Collisions are rare in the asteroid belt, unlike the impression from games or Hollywood the asteroid belt is not a seething mess of 3D billiards, the average distance between rocks is greater than the Earth Moon seperation.

    2. Vulch

      Re: metallic core of a failed protoplanet

      Basically yes. Most simulations of Solar System formation have several largish (up to the size of the Moon) bodies forming in the asterid belt and either colliding with each other or being ejected following close misses with each other and Jupiter. The asteroids we see there now are the debris left over from the collisions.

    3. Trigonoceps occipitalis

      Re: metallic core of a failed protoplanet

      The asteroids were once a planet. An alien race, losing a war with Earth, send an Armageddon weapon back in time. Approaching the Sun it counts seven planets* and destroys number eight. This is, of course, the planet between Earth and Mars that existed before it was blown up by the Aliens.

      I can't, for the life of me, recall the short story title nor the author.

      * At the time the story was written Pluto was considered to be a planet.

      1. Trigonoceps occipitalis

        Re: metallic core of a failed protoplanet

        Oops!

        six and seven

  2. wiggers

    Is this Dilbert?

    "NASA said it has since pulled more employees to work on the Psyche mission – including hiring more leaders..."

    "Top management at JPL must also organize meetings more regularly"

    Yeah, that should do it!

    1. AVR Bronze badge

      Re: Is this Dilbert?

      I guess the idea is that NASA would find out about problems faster? But no, the direct effect of adding more management and meetings is hardly going to speed up work.

      1. Eclectic Man Silver badge

        Re: Is this Dilbert?

        At least management has admitted that the current team was unable to deliver the software on time, and postponed the project rather than promising to get something together in time and then discovering that it doesn't work properly (like quite a few projects most Reg readers could mention, I expect). After all this really is 'Rocket Science', nice to see some honesty from managers.

        So, umm, best wishes for 2023.

  3. Potemkine! Silver badge

    Ah yes, more meetings, that's the way to make a project go faster!

    Nope.

    == Bring us Dabbsy back! ==

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lucky the review board pointed out that they didn't have a project chief engineer, otherwise they may never have noticed.

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