NASA Releases 4,609-km Psyche Mars Flyby Video as 3 Instruments Pass Key Tests
Updated
Updated · Sky at Night Magazine · Jul 20
NASA Releases 4,609-km Psyche Mars Flyby Video as 3 Instruments Pass Key Tests
3 articles · Updated · Sky at Night Magazine · Jul 20
Summary
NASA said Psyche’s May 2026 Mars flyby did more than produce a new video: the spacecraft’s imager, magnetometer and spectrometer all returned successful test data ahead of its 2029 asteroid rendezvous.
At 4,609 km from Mars, the gravity-assist pass let engineers save fuel and verify instruments under real conditions, with the imager capturing craters, the south polar ice cap and Huygens crater over a monthlong encounter.
The magnetometer recorded its first magnetic-field signature from a celestial body, detecting a sharp uptick in Mars’s bow shock, while the neutron spectrometer saw the expected count-rate enhancement near closest approach.
NASA said the data broadly matched existing knowledge of Mars while adding a new perspective, including distant detections of Phobos and Deimos that help prepare Psyche to search for possible moonlets at asteroid Psyche.
The Mars assist kept the spacecraft on the exact trajectory needed for arrival at asteroid Psyche in July 2029, with sustained solar-electric thrusting set to resume later this fall.