NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is making a historic close approach to Mars today, skimming within roughly 2,800 miles of the Red Planet. This flyby is a critical step in the mission’s six-year journey to the 16 Psyche asteroid, a rare metal-rich object in the main asteroid belt, according to NASA. The maneuver will accelerate the spacecraft and give scientists a unique opportunity to test its instruments on a planetary target before reaching its final destination in 2029.
Gravity Assist: Boosting Psyche’s Trajectory
The flyby leverages Mars’ gravity to propel Psyche faster toward its namesake asteroid. Already traveling at 12,333 miles per hour, the spacecraft will gain additional speed, conserving its xenon propellant for the long journey ahead. This maneuver, known as a gravity assist, is a cornerstone of interplanetary travel, allowing missions to reach distant targets with minimal fuel consumption.
The spacecraft launched in October 2023 with a mission to explore 16 Psyche, thought to be the exposed core of an ancient planetesimal. “We are now exactly on target for the flyby, and we’ve programmed the flight computer with everything that the spacecraft will do throughout May,” Sarah Bairstow, Psyche’s mission planning lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a NASA statement. “This is our first opportunity in flight to calibrate Psyche’s imager with something bigger than a few pixels, and we’ll also make observations with the mission’s other science instruments.”
Observing Mars And Its Surroundings
During the close approach, Psyche’s multispectral imager will capture thousands of detailed observations of Mars. These images will not only calibrate the instruments for later asteroid observations but also help scientists study subtle features surrounding the Red Planet.
The mission team hopes to detect a faint dusty ring or torus around Mars, thought to form when micrometeorites strike its moons, Phobos and Deimos, ejecting tiny particles into space. Sunlight scattering through this dust could make it visible to Psyche’s instruments. The flyby also allows the team to search for small satellites around Mars, refining techniques that will later be used to identify tiny moonlets near the asteroid.
“If all our instruments are powered up, and we can do important testing and calibration of the science instruments, that would be the icing on the cake,” Lindy Elkins-Tanton, principal investigator for Psyche at the University of California, Berkeley, said.
Preparing For A Rare Asteroid Encounter
16 Psyche is unique because it is likely the exposed nickel-iron core of a planetesimal, providing a rare glimpse into the internal structure of a body similar to the cores of terrestrial planets. Studying it could answer fundamental questions about planetary formation and the early solar system.
Psyche’s Mars flyby is the mission’s first major planetary encounter and a critical rehearsal for its future work in the asteroid belt. Every observation taken during this pass, from planetary features to faint dust and potential satellites, enhances the mission’s readiness and the quality of data scientists hope to gather at 16 Psyche.
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