The launch of NASA's mission to the Main Belt Asteroid (16) Psyche has been delayed again. NASA pushed back the launch date in May, so that it wouldn't be earlier than late September.

Psyche is NASA's first mission designed to study a metal-rich asteroid, but that mission will not launch this year, the agency announced Friday.

According to NASA, the spacecraft's flight software and testing equipment was not delivered on time. Despite this, the space agency reports that there isn't enough time left for it to complete necessary further testing before October 11.

More alarmingly, the agency has decided not to immediately reschedule the launch, but rather to form an independent assessment team to review the project's path forward rather urgently.

In a statement, NASA's Associate Administrator for the Science Directorate in Washington, Thomas Zurbuchen, said: 'NASA takes cost and schedule commitments very seriously.'

Asteroid Psyche was to have been reached by 2026 by spacecraft. The spacecraft could launch in 2023 or 2024, but NASA says Psyche's orbital position relative to Earth means it would not be able to reach the asteroid until 2029 or 2030, respectively.

Psyche is scheduled to spend 21 months in orbit around Asteroid (16) Psyche and hopefully provide clues as to how metal-core planets, including Earth, formed.

Solar panels on the spacecraft will deploy one hour after launch and produce 2kW of power, NASA says. This is about the amount of power needed to operate a handheld hair dryer.

However, that is enough to operate a magnetometer to see if the asteroid has a magnetic field; imagers to look at the asteroid's surface and map it, and spectrometers to find out what its composition is.

The arrays will also power the Deep Space Optical Communications Technology Demonstration, which NASA says will be used to test high-data-rate laser communication technology.