Post by @AkaSci@fosstodon.org

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft will swing by Mars on Friday, May 15, around 19:27 UTC, passing ~4,500 km from the planet’s surface at ~19,848 km/h.

It will steal some energy from Mars and get a gravitational boost to speed up and adjust its trajectory toward the metal-rich asteroid Psyche, for rendezvous in Aug 2029.

https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/psyche/2026/05/08/nasas-psyche-mission-to-fly-by-mars-for-gravity-assist/

Check out these threads for more info on the mission -
https://fosstodon.org/@AkaSci/111227821265670490
https://fosstodon.org/@AkaSci/111235410515257631
https://fosstodon.org/@AkaSci/114430022259288973
1/n

1. Still from animation in video of Psyche flying over Mars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5k8T8Nas1g&t=122s

2. Orbit and timeline of the mission from NASA
Source: https://d2pn8kiwq2w21t.cloudfront.net/documents/psyche-press-kit.pdf
With some added annotations by me — 1. Still from animation in video of Psyche flying over Mars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5k8T8Nas1g&t=122s 2. Orbit and timeline of the mission from NASA Source: https://d2pn8kiwq2w21t.cloudfront.net/documents/psyche-press-kit.pdf With some added annotations by me

NASA Science

NASA’s Psyche Mission to Fly by Mars for Gravity Assist

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft will get a boost from Mars on Friday, May 15, passing just 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) from the planet’s surface at some 12,333

last year

NASA engineers are troubleshooting an issue with the solar electric hall-effect thrusters on the Psyche spacecraft. A drop in pressure in the line that feeds xenon gas to the thrusters (36 psi -> 26 psi) has caused the thrusters to shut down. If a fix is not found by mid-June, a back-up fuel line may be activated.

Hall-effect thrusters work by ionizing atoms of a gas like Xenon, accelerating them to high speeds and expelling them to generate a gentle steady thrust.

https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/psyche/2025/04/29/nasas-psyche-mission-looking-into-propulsion-system/
1/n

5 Replies

0 Boosts

AkaSci 🛰️

@AkaSci@fosstodon.org 2 months ago

Video from NASA with details on how the Psyche spacecraft will use a gravity assist with Mars on May 15, 2026, to slingshot itself and change the plane of its orbit for its rendezvous with the asteroid Psyche in 2029.

Most of the instruments onboard the Psyche spacecraft will be active during the flyby for test and calibration purposes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5k8T8Nas1g
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/True Story Films
2/n

AkaSci 🛰️

@AkaSci@fosstodon.org 2 months ago

Mars as seen by the Psyche spacecraft on May 3 from a distance of 4.8 million km.

"The image was acquired by the multispectral imager instrument’s panchromatic or broadband filter, with an exposure time of just 2 milliseconds.

Even with this short exposure time, the crescent is extremely bright and parts of the image are oversaturated.

The light seen here is sunlight reflected off the surface of Mars and also scattered by dust particles in its atmosphere."

https://science.nasa.gov/photojournal/nasas-psyche-mission-captures-mars-during-gravity-assist-approach/
3/n

1. Image of Mars was captured by NASA’s Psyche mission on May 3, 2026, about 3 million miles from the planet as the spacecraft approaches for a gravity assist on May 15. Sunlight is reflected and scattered by dust in the Martian atmosphere, creating an extended crescent around the planet.

The spacecraft is approaching Mars from a high-phase angle, meaning that the planet appears only as a thin crescent, like our own crescent Moon seen around its new Moon phase. From this viewing geometry, the Sun is out of frame and “above” both Mars and Psyche.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

2. Colorized close-up of the image. — 1. Image of Mars was captured by NASA’s Psyche mission on May 3, 2026, about 3 million miles from the planet as the spacecraft approaches for a gravity assist on May 15. Sunlight is reflected and scattered by dust in the Martian atmosphere, creating an extended crescent around the planet. The spacecraft is approaching Mars from a high-phase angle, meaning that the planet appears only as a thin crescent, like our own crescent Moon seen around its new Moon phase. From this viewing geometry, the Sun is out of frame and “above” both Mars and Psyche. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU 2. Colorized close-up of the image.

NASA Science

NASA’s Psyche Mission Captures Mars During Gravity Assist Approach

This colorized image of Mars was captured by NASA’s Psyche mission on May 3, 2026, about 3 million miles (4.8 million kilometers) from the planet. The

AkaSci 🛰️

@AkaSci@fosstodon.org 2 months ago

The Psyche spacecraft Multispectral Imager Camera B (there are two) has been clicking away taking images of Mars as it gets closer.

Raw images using different filters (V, G, B, IR, ...) are posted at https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/psyche-raw-images/.

The 1st image is an IR1-G-B color composite of images taken yesterday, processed by imaging maestro Simeon Schmauß @stim3on

The 2nd image is a raw image using the Green filter (550 nm), taken on May 14, 2026 at 3:41:21 PM (UTC).

https://www.flickr.com/photos/semeion/
4/n

Flickr

Simeon Schmauß

Explore Simeon Schmauß’s 329 photos on Flickr!

NASA Solar System Exploration

Psyche Raw Images – NASA Solar System Exploration

NASA’s real-time science encyclopedia of deep space exploration. Our scientists and far-ranging robots explore the wild frontiers of our solar system.

AkaSci 🛰️

@AkaSci@fosstodon.org 2 months ago

Here is some info on the two Multispectral Imager Cameras onboard the NASA Psyche spacecraft.

Focus: Fixed
FOV: 4.6° × 3.4°
Focal ratio: f/2.9
Effective focal length: 148 mm
Filters: nine - V, B, G, IR1-IR4, clear, blocking
CCD: 1600 × 1200 px, 11.84 × 8.88 mm, ON Semi (Kodak) KAI-2020M
Memory: 128 MB SDRAM, 8 GB flash buffer
Uncompressed bits/px: 12 bits
Uncompressed raw image size: 2.7 MBytes
Compression: Lossless and JPEG
Camera Head Mass: 1.77 kg

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-025-01169-3
4/n

1. Pic of Flight Psyche Multispectral Imager Camera Heads (left) and flight Digital Electronics Assembly (right), prior to integration with the spacecraft. For scale, the pocket knife is 3.5 inches (90 mm) long.

2. Schematic of the imager

(A) Cutaway CAD view of the Psyche Multispectral Imager, along with actual photos of some of the key hardware components, including the 57 mm diameter Primary Mirror M1 on a test bench, the ∼12 × 9 mm CCD sensor, and the 9.1 cm diameter filter wheel.

(B) Ray trace of the Psyche Multispectral Imager catadioptric telescope, with lens and mirror elements as identified in (A) above. M1 is the spherical primary mirror, and M2 is the spherical secondary mirror, coated onto the back (CCD side) of lens element L2. The part of the front of L2 corresponding to M2 is coated with Z306 diffuse black paint. M3 is a flat-surface mirror coated onto the front of lens element L1 and used for laser alignment verification of camera boresight pointing during pre-flight testing — 1. Pic of Flight Psyche Multispectral Imager Camera Heads (left) and flight Digital Electronics Assembly (right), prior to integration with the spacecraft. For scale, the pocket knife is 3.5 inches (90 mm) long. 2. Schematic of the imager (A) Cutaway CAD view of the Psyche Multispectral Imager, along with actual photos of some of the key hardware components, including the 57 mm diameter Primary Mirror M1 on a test bench, the ∼12 × 9 mm CCD sensor, and the 9.1 cm diameter filter wheel. (B) Ray trace of the Psyche Multispectral Imager catadioptric telescope, with lens and mirror elements as identified in (A) above. M1 is the spherical primary mirror, and M2 is the spherical secondary mirror, coated onto the back (CCD side) of lens element L2. The part of the front of L2 corresponding to M2 is coated with Z306 diffuse black paint. M3 is a flat-surface mirror coated onto the front of lens element L1 and used for laser alignment verification of camera boresight pointing during pre-flight testing

SpringerLink

The Psyche Multispectral Imager Investigation: Characterizing the Geology, Topography, and Multispectral Properties of a Metal-Rich World - Space Science Reviews

The Psyche Multispectral Imager (“the Imager”) is a payload system designed to directly achieve or to indirectly enable the key scientific goals and optical navigation requirements of NASA’s Psyche mission, which will conduct the first up-close orbital investigation of the metal-rich Main Belt asteroid (16) Psyche. The Imager consists of a pair of block redundant cameras and electronics that are mounted inside the thermally controlled spacecraft body, with a view out the spacecraft −X panel that will be nadir-pointed during nominal asteroid orbital mapping operations. The two identical Camera Heads are connected to a separate Digital Electronics Assembly (DEA) box that interfaces to the spacecraft avionics and that provides power, commanding, data processing, and onboard image storage. The Imager system shares significant heritage with imaging instruments flown on the Mars Climate Orbiter, the Mars Science Laboratory and Mars 2020 rovers, and Juno. Each camera consists of a 1600 × 1200 photosensitive pixel charge-coupled device (CCD) detector and its associated electronics, a 9-position filter wheel assembly, a compact catadioptric f $f$ /2.9 telescope with a fixed focal length of 148 mm, and a sunshade to minimize stray and scattered light. The Imager CCD, filters, and optics enable broadband polychromatic (∼540 ± 250 nm) imaging plus narrowband imaging in 7 colors centered from 439 to 1015 nm. An additional neutral density filter enables protection of the CCD from direct solar illumination. Each camera has a field of view of 4.6° × 3.4° and an instantaneous field of view of 50 μrad/pixel that enables imaging of the asteroid at scales ranging from ∼35 m/pix from 700 km altitude to ∼4 m/pix at 75 km altitude. The primary camera (“Imager A”) is pointed along the spacecraft −X axis, and the backup camera (“Imager B”) is toed-out by 3.7° to potentially enable greater surface area coverage per unit time if both Imagers are operated simultaneously during some mission phases. Stereoscopic mapping is performed by observing the same surface regions with either camera over a range of off-nadir pointing angles.

1 more replies