LOS ANGELES, June 3, 2026, 4:03 PM PDT
NASA says its Psyche spacecraft picked up speed and tweaked its course after skimming just 2,864 miles (4,609 km) from Mars on May 15. Don Han, who leads navigation for Psyche at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, put the gravity assist’s payoff at about a 1,000 mile-per-hour velocity kick and a one-degree tilt in the craft’s orbit around the sun. Next stop: a metal-rich asteroid, with arrival set for 2029.
Psyche just ticked off its last major planetary checkpoint before heading into the asteroid belt. The team pulled off a gravity assist, swinging past Mars to tap the planet’s tug for a boost, conserving precious xenon propellant. For Sarah Bairstow, who heads up mission planning at JPL, the flyby also meant the crew finally got to tune the spacecraft’s imager against “something bigger than a few pixels.” They leaned on data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Perseverance rover, and ESA’s Mars Express for side-by-side comparisons. NASA Science
The real draw is the target itself: Asteroid Psyche could be an exposed nickel-iron core from an early planet or planetesimal. According to JPL, the mission’s aim is to put that theory on trial, since Earth’s metal core is buried too deep and hot for direct study.
Psyche’s flyby of Mars yielded new images as well. In one enhanced-color shot, Huygens crater—a double-ring formation stretching roughly 290 miles across—stands out, with distinct color variations. According to NASA, those differences are tied to dust, sand, and exposed bedrock in the Martian highlands.
Elsewhere, wind has carved streaks across impact craters in the Syrtis Major region, according to NASA. The agency noted the streaks run for roughly 30 miles, or 50 km, with the image resolution at close to 1,200 feet per pixel.
NASA’s spacecraft snapped its sharpest shot yet of Mars’ south polar cap, packed with water ice and stretching over 430 miles. The photo was captured just after the craft’s closest pass.
These images served more than a PR purpose. Jim Bell, who heads up the Psyche imaging team at Arizona State University, described the collection as a “unique and important” opportunity to evaluate both the cameras and early image-processing systems well ahead of the spacecraft’s arrival at its asteroid destination, according to the report. Gizmodo
Psyche is switching back to its solar-electric propulsion system, firing up those solar-charged xenon thrusters for the run toward the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. NASA expects the spacecraft to get pulled in by the asteroid’s gravity around late July 2029. The main science phase kicks off in August and is set to last about two years.
Launched in October 2023 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, the spacecraft is headed on a 2.2 billion-mile journey. Reuters noted before the flyby that the van-sized probe would spend 26 months orbiting the asteroid, gathering data on its gravity, magnetic field, and makeup.
But there’s a catch. NASA hasn’t closed the book on Psyche’s true nature. The asteroid might be a chunk of an iron-heavy planetary core—or, perhaps, a different breed of metal-rich object, its rock and metal blended in unexpected ways. If it turns out to be something else, the mission still stands, but researchers would need to adjust their theories on rocky planet formation.
