Late delivery of spacecraft power electronics and an "ambitious" flight software development schedule has forced NASA to delay the launch of its first New Millennium programme spacecraft, the Deep Space 1.
The delay, from July to October, will mean the scrapping of planned fly-bys of an asteroid, a comet and the planet Mars in its primary mission to validate new technologies. A new, less ambitious schedule of fly-bys, including one or more asteroids, has still to be announced.
The wait follows the six-month delay to NASA's first Earth Observing System spacecraft .
Source: Flight International
