NASA's Psyche Probe Flies Within 2,800 Miles of Mars, Gains Speed for 2029 Asteroid Mission
The Psyche spacecraft performed a close Mars flyby on May 15, capturing images and receiving a gravity-assist boost that will help it reach the metal-rich asteroid Psyche in 2029.
NASA's Psyche spacecraft passed within about 4,600 kilometers (2,800 miles) of Mars on May 15, traveling at roughly 19,848 kilometers per hour. The maneuver provided a gravity-assist that increased the probe’s velocity by approximately 1,000 miles per hour and altered its orbital plane by about one degree, positioning it for a rendezvous with the asteroid Psyche in the summer of 2029.
During the flyby, the probe recorded images of Mars, including a view of the planet’s thin night-time crescent, its south polar ice cap, and the double-ringed Huygens crater. The encounter also allowed engineers to calibrate instruments for better measurements of Mars’ bow shock, the region where solar particles are deflected around the planet.
"We’ve confirmed that Mars gave the spacecraft a 1,000-mile-per-hour boost and shifted its orbital plane by about one degree relative to the Sun," said Don Han, navigation lead for the Psyche mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "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," added Bob Mase, project manager at JPL.
The mission, launched in 2023 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, aims to study asteroid Psyche, a 280-kilometer-wide body in the main belt thought to be the exposed metallic core of a protoplanet. The spacecraft carries a multispectral imager, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, a magnetometer, and an X-band radio system to map the asteroid’s composition and gravity field. It is also testing a deep-space optical communication system that uses near-infrared lasers to transmit data to Earth.
"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 of the Psyche mission.