Description Captured by the multispectral imager instrument on NASA’s Psyche mission, this is an enhanced-color view of the large double-ring crater Huygens (upper left; about 290 miles, or 470 kilometers, in diameter) and the surrounding heavily cratered southern highlands near 15 degrees south latitude. The various colors in this dramatic scene are likely due to […]
Category: Psyche Mission
NASA’s Psyche Mission Spies Mars’ Wind-Blown Craters During Close Approach
Description This view of the Martian surface, captured by NASA’s Psyche spacecraft on May 15, 2026, shows streaks that have formed due to wind blowing over impact craters in the Syrtis Major region. The image scale is nearly 1,200 feet (360 meters) per pixel. The wind streaks extend to about 30 miles (50 kilometers) long, […]
Psyche’s High-Resolution View of Mars’ South Pole
Description This is the highest-resolution view of the water ice-rich south polar cap of Mars captured by NASA’s Psyche mission after it made its close approach with the planet for a gravity assist. The image scale is around 0.7 miles per pixel (1.14 kilometers per pixel). The cap itself extends across more than 430 miles […]
NASA’s Psyche Mission Images the Crescent of Mars
Description This view of a crescent Mars was captured on May 15, 2026, at about 5:03 a.m. PDT by NASA’s Psyche mission as it approached the planet for a gravity assist. Captured by the spacecraft’s multispectral imager instrument, this was the last view of the whole planet before it began to overfill the field of […]
NASA’s Psyche Mission Aces Mars Flyby, Targets Metal-Rich Asteroid
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft completed its close approach of Mars on May 15, coming within 2,864 miles (4,609 kilometers) of the planet’s surface. This flyby used a gravity assist from Mars to provide a critical boost in speed and to adjust the spacecraft’s orbital plane without using any onboard propellant, sending it on its way toward […]
NASA’s Psyche Mission Captures Mars During Gravity Assist Approach
Description 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 spacecraft is approaching the planet for a gravity assist on May 15 that will give it a boost in speed and adjust its trajectory toward asteroid Psyche for […]
NASA’s Deep Space Communications Demo Exceeds Project Expectations
The project has exceeded all of its technical goals after two years, setting up the foundations of high-speed communications for NASA’s future human missions to Mars. NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications technology successfully showed that data encoded in lasers could be reliably transmitted, received, and decoded after traveling millions of miles from Earth at distances […]
NASA’s Psyche Captures Images of Earth, Moon
Headed for a metal-rich asteroid of the same name, the Psyche spacecraft successfully calibrated its cameras by looking homeward. On schedule for its 2029 arrival at the asteroid Psyche, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft recently looked back toward home and captured images of Earth and our Moon from about 180 million miles (290 million kilometers) away. The […]