NASA released a video showing Mars images captured by Psyche during the spacecraft’s May 2026 NASA Psyche Mars flyby. The close pass gave the mission team a chance to test instruments before Psyche reaches asteroid Psyche in July 2029.
The images were taken from 4,609 km, or 2,864 miles, as the spacecraft swept past Mars over a flyby that lasted a month. Mars first appeared as a crescent, then later in more detailed views that included craters, the south polar ice cap and Huygens crater.
Lindy Elkins-Tanton on Psyche
Lindy Elkins-Tanton, principal investigator for Psyche at the University of California, Berkeley, said the mission’s imager, magnetometer and gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer teams worked overtime to make full use of the encounter. “The mission’s imager, magnetometer, and gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer teams worked overtime to make full use of this planetary encounter, and all instruments delivered great results,” she said.
She said the team did not expect major discoveries because Mars has been extensively studied. “We didn’t anticipate big discoveries, given how extensively the planet has been studied, but we did complement Mars science with the data we collected through Psyche’s unique perspective.”
Psyche instruments at Mars
The Mars pass also served as a systems check for the spacecraft’s science package. Psyche carries a multispectral imager, a pair of cameras built to photograph asteroid surfaces in different wavelengths of light, and the Mars views gave scientists a chance to see whether the cameras were working as intended.
The team said the instruments operated as designed and produced data that matched what planetary scientists already know about Mars, while also revealing some new insights. One of Psyche’s other instruments, the gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, is designed to analyse the chemistry of material on the asteroid’s surface.
July 2029 for Psyche
The Mars flyby fits into the spacecraft’s route to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The video gives the clearest look yet at what Psyche collected during the encounter, and it leaves one practical question for the mission team: what specific new insights about Mars came from the spacecraft’s unique perspective?
For now, the tested instruments and the released video point to a spacecraft that used its May 2026 pass to check its hardware and gather data on the way to asteroid Psyche.
