Overview
- NASA’s Psyche used a monthlong gravity-assist flyby of Mars in May to alter its trajectory and speed on the roughly 2.2-billion-mile trip to asteroid 16 Psyche with a rendezvous targeted for 2029.
- The agency released a compilation of close-up images that show windswept terrain, large craters, the polar ice cap, and the moons Phobos and Deimos while teams used the views to test camera calibration and imaging procedures.
- Psyche’s neutron spectrometer recorded a count-rate enhancement near closest approach consistent with expectations for neutrons escaping Mars at the spacecraft’s altitude.
- The onboard magnetometer registered a sharp rise in magnetic field tied to Mars’ bow shock region while gamma-ray channels showed no Martian signal because the flyby altitude was too high to detect them.
- The spacecraft has returned to cruise and mission specialists plan to restart its solar-electric propulsion later this year so Psyche can resume steady thrusting toward the asteroid and begin primary science aimed at determining whether 16 Psyche is a metallic core or a planetesimal.