Post by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The initial reports are in: NASA's Psyche mission aced its Mars flyby. ☑️ The Psyche spacecraft is headed for the asteroid belt to explore a mysterious, metal-rich asteroid, also called Psyche. On May 15, mission planners at JPL used a gravity assist from Mars to provide a critical boost in speed and to adjust the spacecraft’s trajectory without using any onboard propellant. After the flyby, the flight team analyzed radio signals between the spacecraft and NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) – the global system managed by JPL that is used for communicating with interplanetary spacecraft – to confirm that Psyche was on the correct trajectory. “Although we were confident in our calculations and flight plan, monitoring the DSN’s Doppler signal in real time during the flyby was still exciting,” said Don Han, Psyche’s navigation lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We’ve confirmed that Mars gave the spacecraft a 1,000 mile‑per‑hour boost and shifted its orbital plane by about 1 degree relative to the Sun. We are now on course for arrival at the asteroid Psyche in summer 2029.” As part of a practice run for the asteroid, the team also captured some striking postcards from the Red Planet. See more: https://lnkd.in/gj2N89Er