&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "Asteroid-bound mission caught Mars in a completely new light")
The Psyche mission, headed for Asteroid 16 Psyche, has captured a never-before-seen view of Mars on its journey through space. Looking at it from a high angle, it caught the Red Planet from a unique perspective, capturing an illuminated crescent. The probe is travelling to the outer part of the main asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. With millions of asteroids in the belt, Psyche pulled interest because of its reflective metal surface, which showed that it is a large metallic asteroid.
Scientists believe it could be the core of an ancient planetary rock which did not get to turn into a planet. Launched in 2023, Psyche will travel 3.6 billion kilometres to reach the asteroid in 2029. The journey included a Mars flyby to use the gravitational force of the planet to slingshot the probe on a trajectory towards Mars while saving fuel.
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Mars gravity boost
During the manoeuvre, the Psyche spacecraft came within 4,609 kilometres of the Martian surface. “We’ve confirmed that Mars gave the spacecraft a 1,000-mile-per-hour boost and shifted its orbital plane by about 1 degree relative to the Sun,” Don Han, Psyche’s navigation lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said. The team also used this opportunity to test the systems and camera on board the spacecraft, which took pictures of the Red Planet. From a high vantage point, the probe saw a red crescent.
After flying away, it also snapped a nearly "full Mars" view. “The thin crescent on approach and the nearly ‘full Mars’ view after we fly past create opportunities for the imaging team for both great calibration observations as well as just plain beautiful photos,” Jim Bell, the Psyche imager instrument lead at Arizona State University, said, before the flyby.
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A full view of Mars captured by Psyche (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)
Psyche took thousands of photos of Mars and also saw nighttime and daytime across different regions. It also captured its south pole region and dust scattered by the wind streaking across surface craters.
The testing done using Mars was crucial to ensure that the cameras and instruments are working fine before it finally reaches the asteroid. Once it reaches the asteroid, it will enter an orbit that shifts lower and higher in altitude to map the space rock fully. If the probe successfully finds evidence that the shiny portion on the asteroid is the interior of a planet, it would be a major breakthrough in planetary science and would be the first time displaying what the insides of our own planet likely look like.
