NASA’s Psyche spacecraft swept within 2,800 miles of Mars on May 15, gaining a thousand-mile-per-hour velocity boost and testing its scientific instruments. The planetary encounter yielded a time-lapse video of the Red Planet as the solar-powered probe continues its journey toward a metal-rich asteroid.
The journey to the outer solar system sometimes requires taking a detour through familiar territory. On May 15, the Psyche spacecraft completed a high-speed flyby of Mars, skimming approximately 2,800 miles above the planet’s surface while traveling at more than 12,000 miles per hour.
While the encounter served primarily as a gravitational slingshot to shape the spacecraft’s trajectory, mission teams turned on the payload for a comprehensive dress rehearsal. The encounter tested sensors and calibration settings before engineers downlinked the data for analysis.
Gravity Assist and Trajectory Adjustment
Planetary flybys allow spacecraft to gain velocity without burning onboard xenon propellant. By borrowing momentum from Mars, the maneuver successfully reshaped the probe’s orbit.
According to navigation officials, the maneuver achieved precise targets for the multi-year interplanetary trek. This gravity assist was years in the making, and the navigation team nailed it – Psyche flew by Mars on exactly the trajectory we needed to set us on a path to rendezvous with the asteroid in the summer of 2029,
said Bob Mase, the project manager of Psyche at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement reported by Sciencealert.
The gravity assist increased the spacecraft’s speed by approximately 1,000 miles per hour while shifting its orbital plane by about one degree relative to the Sun. Mission managers confirmed that the spacecraft remains in sound condition and is scheduled to resume sustained solar-electric propulsion thrusting this fall.
Instrument Checkouts and Planetary Observations
Although Mars was merely a stepping stone rather than the mission’s ultimate destination, the approach provided a rare proving ground for instruments designed to study an asteroid. The multispectral imager, magnetometer, and gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer operated during the encounter.
Researchers noted that the flyby offered valuable practice for identifying small moons. We were also able to fully test its calibration and sensitivity to scattered light, including picking out the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos from very far away as a part of a practice for the satellite search that we’ll use at the asteroid Psyche to look for any moonlets there,
said Jim Bell, the imager instrument lead at Arizona State University, as noted by Scientific American.
The imager captured views of the Martian surface, documenting impact craters, the dual rings of the Huygens crater, and the southern polar ice cap, which spans some 700 kilometers. Meanwhile, the gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer detected data near closest approach.
Proving the Magnetometer in Dynamic Conditions
For the mission’s magnetometer team, the Mars encounter marked the first opportunity to test the magnetometer on an object. The instrument consists of a pair of sensors mounted on a 2.15-meter boom designed to isolate the spacecraft’s own magnetic field from external readings.
During the closest approach, the sensor registered a sharp rise in activity as it crossed the Martian bow shock, where the solar wind collides with the planet’s magnetic field.
Destination: A Metallic World in 2029
Launched in 2023 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, the spacecraft is headed toward 16 Psyche, a massive asteroid located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists hypothesize that the potato-shaped object—roughly the size of Massachusetts—may represent the exposed nickel-iron core of an early protoplanet stripped of its rocky mantle by ancient collisions.
The mission leadership views the successful Martian rehearsal as a crucial milestone for the remaining travel. The mission’s imager, magnetometer, and gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer teams worked overtime to make full use of this planetary encounter, and all instruments delivered great results,
said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, principal investigator for Psyche at the University of California, Berkeley, according to coverage from Earth.com. The spacecraft is on schedule to rendezvous with the metallic asteroid in August 2029.
