What probably happenned is that planning that trajectory and putting in the equipment would've taken longer and the alien manager responsible for the project ha

What probably happenned is that planning that trajectory and putting in the equipment would've taken longer and the alien manager responsible for the project had promised his boss he'd deliver it on time. When the alien engineers pointed out the whole point of the mission was to collect data and shipping it as is would be a total waste alien manager responded with some variant of "We'll fix that in the next release." because his bonus was based on shipping that thing now.