NASA’s Psyche took images as it flew past Mars last week. The spacecraft used the planet’s gravity to give itself a boost on its journey to its target asteroid.
By Adam Kovac edited by Claire Cameron
NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
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from NASA Psyche mission to study an asteroid The eponymous Beyond Mars played tourist last week, with the spacecraft flying past the Red Planet and taking photos as it went. Arriving within 2,864 miles of the planet’s surface at its closest approach, Psyche used the planet’s gravity to increase its speed and adjust its trajectory toward its ultimate destination: a metal-rich asteroid called 16 Psyche, located between Mars and Jupiter.
Among the new photographs is a high-resolution shot of Mars’ south pole, home to a 430-mile-wide ice cap.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
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THE The Psyche mission has begun its six-year, 2.2 billion mile journey through the solar system on October 13, 2023. Once the probe reaches the asteroid by August 2029, the spacecraft will begin orbiting its namesake while taking photographs and mapping the surface. It will also use its onboard scientific instruments – a magnetometer, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer and a multispectral imager – to try to determine the chemical composition of 16 Psyche.
The Mars flyby allowed the Psyche team not only to test the spacecraft’s cameras, but also to see how it and NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) communicate. The DSN measures Doppler shifts, or changes in radio wave frequencies caused by relative motion, to track spacecraft in deep space. NASA has a digital reconstruction of the flyby that can to see here.
This view of the Martian surface shows streaks that formed from wind blowing over impact craters in the Syrtis Major region.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
“We confirmed that Mars gave the spacecraft an acceleration of 1,600 miles per hour and shifted its orbital plane about 1 degree relative to the Sun,” Don Han, head of navigation at Psyche, said in a statement. statement. “We are now on track to arrive at the asteroid Psyche in the summer of 2029.”
Asteroid 16 Psyche is large, measuring about 173 miles across at its widest point. Some scientists hypothesize that the rock is actually made of metals from the core of a planetesimal, a large, solid space object that acts as a building block for the planets. And since it’s currently impossible to drill a hole into the Earth’s core to better understand how our planet formed, studying objects like 16 Psyche might be the best solution.
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