The spacecraft made a close approach to the red planet in May on its way to explore the asteroid it’s named after.
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is well on its way to its target in the asteroid belt after receiving a gravity assist from Mars in May, and the space agency just shared some incredible images from that brief encounter. Psyche captured thousands of images with its multispectral imager as it approached and flew past Mars. A timelapse shared by NASA on Friday stitches these images together to create a captivating video of the entire encounter, showing the crescent Mars it captured upon arrival, detailed views of the surface and the icy south pole behind it as it departed.
“The imager performed brilliantly, delivering some rarely seen views of the red planet,” said Jim Bell, the Psyche imager instrument lead at Arizona State University, in a statement. The spacecraft began its approach of Mars on May 2 and made its closest approach on May 15.
This maneuver gave it a speed boost and adjusted its trajectory to put it on a course for the asteroid Psyche while saving propellant for the long journey. Psyche is expected to reach the eponymous asteroid in 2029. “Besides the obvious beauty of the photos, we were also able to fully test its calibration and sensitivity to scattered light,” Bell said, “including picking out the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos from very far away as a part of a practice for the satellite search that we’ll use at the asteroid Psyche to look for any moonlets there.”