Overview
- Psyche flew about 4,500 km above Mars on May 15 to use the planet’s gravity to boost speed and set the spacecraft on the planned path for a summer 2029 rendezvous with asteroid Psyche.
- Mission teams activated the imager, magnetometer, and gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer during the encounter to validate systems ahead of asteroid operations.
- The neutron spectrometer recorded a count-rate enhancement near closest approach while the magnetometer saw a strong uptick tied to Mars’s bow shock and the gamma-ray channel showed no Mars signal.
- The imager captured rare views of Mars, including crescents and distant images of Phobos and Deimos, and produced multispectral surface mosaics used to test object-search techniques for the asteroid phase.
- NASA and ESA coordinated near-simultaneous images with Mars Express’s HRSC taken about 1 hour 50 minutes apart that could help calibrate Psyche’s camera, and the spacecraft has returned to cruise with sustained solar-electric thrusting scheduled to resume later this fall.