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NASA’s asteroid hunt Psyche Recently, the spacecraft needed some gravitational help from Mars to keep moving toward its intended target, but it didn’t leave the Red Planet empty-handed. While testing its various research instruments before using them on the distant metal-rich space rock 16 Psyche in 2029, the spacecraft took a travel album’s worth of flyby photographs with its pair of identical cameras.
NASA has published a compilation of images taken during PsycheThe month-long slingshot trail in May. And unlike the thin crescent view seen previously, the stunning close-ups show the windswept surface, massive craters and even the solar polar ice cap on Earth’s closest neighbor planet.
“The camera performed brilliantly and provided some rarely seen views of the Red Planet,” said Jim Bell, Psychethe leader of the Arizona State University imaging instrument said in a statement.
Psyche captures stunning time-lapse video of her encounter with Mars
In addition to the images themselves, the team successfully tested PsycheCamera calibrations and sensitivity to scattered light. These tests also included highlighting the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos, a process that will be repeated on the asteroid to hopefully locate possible orbital moons. Meanwhile, mission specialists tested PsycheNeutron and gamma ray spectrometer. Planetary bodies and asteroids emit neutrons and gamma rays while absorbing high-energy cosmic ray waves. Researchers can then use these waves to compare them to known elements and determine the chemical composition of the object. At its closest flyby altitude of 2,864 miles, Psyche It remained too far away to pick up Martian gamma rays, but the team hoped to possibly tag neutrons as they left the planet.
“At the time of closest approach to Mars, the neutron spectrometer detected an improvement in count rate close to what we anticipated. It was very gratifying to see,” said the spectrometer’s scientific lead, David Lawrence.
NASA’s Psyche mission just flew over Mars: here’s what we learned
Then there is PsycheThe magnetometer. The instrument will eventually analyze the asteroid’s core, whose metallic composition will reveal whether it is a rocky planet building block known as a planetesimal. PsycheThe magnetometer will continue to be a very useful tool before reaching its objective. It has been running since the spacecraft launch in 2023 so researchers can measure solar winds. As it approached Mars, the team reported a huge increase in its magnetic field that aligned with an area of the planet that absorbs the most solar wind known as the arc shock region.
“We don’t anticipate any major discoveries, given the extent to which the planet has been studied, but we complement Mars science with the data we collect through Psyche’s unique perspective,” said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, PsychePrincipal investigator at the University of California, Berkeley.
With Mars in the rearview mirror, Psyche Now it continues its 2.2 billion mile journey to its tiny asteroid, with even more work to do. The next step is to restart its solar-electric propulsion system to provide sustained thrust, which specialists hope to handle later this year.
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