Psyche Spacecraft Captures Stunning Mars Snapshots During Gravity‑Assist Flyby

When NASA’s Psyche probe slipped past Mars on May 15, it wasn’t just using the planet’s pull to tweak its path to the asteroid belt – it was also snapping a parade of pictures. From May 2 all the way through May 31 the spacecraft’s camera took a daily snapshot, later stitched together into a one‑minute‑and‑fifteen‑second montage that feels more like an artistic time‑lapse than a scientific side‑note.

The view was a bit odd, though. Because Psyche arrived at a high‑phase angle, only about four percent of the Martian disk was lit. The rest was a deep, shadowy crescent, and the thin atmosphere glowed faintly as solar wind particles brushed past. Hannah Zigo, who works on the multispectral imager team at Arizona State University, joked that the planet looked “like a piece of a cookie crumb floating in space.”

Behind the lenses were people you’d recognize from NASA’s press releases: Lindy Elkins‑Tanton, the mission’s principal investigator from UC Berkeley, and Jim Bell, the imager’s lead at ASU. Both confirmed that, besides the camera, the magnetometer, gamma‑ray, and neutron spectrometers all stayed active, gathering extra data as they rode the slingshot.

Why the extra effort? Psyche’s team needed to fine‑tune the imager before the real work begins – namely hunting for tiny moons orbiting the metallic asteroid 16 Psyche, which the probe is slated to reach in August 2029. By testing the camera on a well‑known world and even spotting Phobos and Deimos, they could calibrate the instrument and practice the detection techniques they’ll need years from now.

It’s a neat reminder that even a ‘just‑passing‑through’ maneuver can yield science goodies and eye‑pleasing visuals. The result? A gorgeous, if slightly dim, portrait of Mars that’s now up for the public to enjoy, complete with a short video that rolls on NASA’s social channels.