NASA has postponed mission to two asteroids

LOS ANGELES – A NASA spacecraft built to explore two of the solar system’s largest asteroids won’t launch this year because the space agency is dealing with cost overruns and technical issues in the project.

The planned summer launch of the Dawn spacecraft has been indefinitely postponed, said Andrew Dantzler, director of NASA’s solar system division.

Mission managers had been ordered to halt work on Dawn in fall while the project was assessed by an independent review team, which is expected to present its findings to NASA on Jan. 27.

Even if NASA gives Dawn the green light, it would take another year for engineers to finish routine testing of the spacecraft, said mission investigator Christopher Russell of the University of California, Los Angeles.

“It’s like running a relay race,” Russell said. “You’re on your last leg, and the judges suddenly say, ‘Stop.’ You lose your momentum.”

Dawn is part of a NASA program called Discovery, which seeks to explore the solar system on what, for NASA, is considered a shoestring budget. The program includes the Stardust mission, which last week returned to Earth with samples of comet dust.

Dawn, however, has suffered several setbacks, including ruptures of two of its fuel tanks during testing, forcing engineers to reduce the amount of xenon gas that will be loaded into the tanks.

The project was capped at $371 million, according to Russell, and when project scientists asked for an extra $40 million last year, NASA ordered the stand down to figure out why it was going over budget.

Dantzler said that while Dawn is vital to advancing knowledge of the solar system’s beginnings, overfunding it would hurt other missions.