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NASA's Psyche spacecraft gets gravity assist from Mars
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1 min read
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Briefly Editorial Team

NASA's Psyche spacecraft gets gravity assist from Mars

TL;DR

  • •Gravity assist near Mars
  • •Acceleration by 447 m/s
  • •Studying the metallic asteroid Psyche

Why it matters

The NASA Psyche mission will provide an opportunity to study an analog of Earth's inner core, which cannot be done in any other way.

Technical details

The NASA Psyche spacecraft successfully performed a gravitational maneuver near Mars, passing over the planet's surface at a distance of 4609 km. The flyby was necessary to change the spacecraft's trajectory without using fuel: the gravity of the Red Planet accelerated the spacecraft by approximately 447 m/s and changed its orbit plane by 1° relative to the Sun.

Context and background

The spacecraft also obtained thousands of images of Mars' surface and atmosphere, including the southern polar region with its polar cap. A separate technical interest is that the Psyche magnetometers were able to detect the Martian bow shock — the region where the solar wind slows down and flows around the planet's magnetospheric-atmospheric shell.

Industry impact

The NASA Psyche mission will provide an opportunity to study an analog of Earth's inner core, which cannot be done in any other way. If the hypothesis about the origin of the Psyche asteroid is confirmed, this will be a rare opportunity to study the core of an ancient planetesimal — the embryo of an unformed Earth-like planet.