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Psyche Research, launched in October 2023 on the way to a metallic asteroid it studies, it recently flew by Mars taking advantage of its gravity and continuing on its way to the asteroid belt. During the mission, the spacecraft acquired new images of the red planet.
Psyche passed within 4,609 kilometers, or 2,864 miles, of the Martian, and was boosted to high speed after completing the gravitational pull. On approach, NASA turned on advanced cameras, magnetometers, and gamma ray and neutron spectrometers to test each instrument using space and Earth’s atmosphere.
In the latest images released by the space agency, the solid Martian surface can be seen in detail, along with the shape of the solar wind which, around the craters and the southern cap, is a lot of ice.
“We have taken thousands of images of the approach to Mars and the state of the Earth and the atmosphere at close range. This data provides a unique and important opportunity for us to demonstrate the performance of the cameras, as well as to test the first models of our imaging equipment that is being developed for use on the asteroid Psyche,” said Jim BellPsyche’s imager instrument lead at Arizona State University.
According to mission scientists, after its flyby of Mars, the probe reached a speed of 1,600 kilometers (or 994 miles) per hour as it shifted its orbit by one degree. The goal is to reach Psyche in the summer of 2029.
