NASA’s Psyche spacecraft swung past Mars this month, picking up speed and sending back a close look at some battered Martian terrain.
The spacecraft flew within 4,609 kilometres of Mars’s surface on May 15 as it continued toward the metal-rich asteroid Psyche, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
During the pass, Psyche captured a series of images, including a view of the double-ring Huygens crater surrounded by the heavily cratered southern highlands of Mars. The image was taken using Psyche’s multispectral imager instrument.
The Mars flyby was also used to increase the spacecraft’s speed and adjust its trajectory without using onboard fuel.
NASA said the gravity assist helped place Psyche on the correct path toward its destination. By using Mars’s gravitational pull, mission planners gave the spacecraft a major boost while conserving propellant for later stages of the mission.
NASA expects the spacecraft to arrive at the asteroid in August 2029.
Once there, it will enter orbit and map the asteroid’s surface while collecting scientific data.
Researchers are interested in Psyche because it may represent the exposed metallic core of an ancient planetesimal, a building block of planets formed early in the solar system’s history.
If that theory is correct, the asteroid could give scientists a chance to study material normally hidden deep inside rocky planets like Earth.
Read more from Science Daily.
