Psyche's Mars Flyby Reveals a Striking Crescent View
NASA's Psyche spacecraft captured thousands of Mars images during a May 15 flyby, offering a rare crescent view that also helped calibrate its cameras; the encounter brought Psyche within about 2,864 miles (4,609 kilometers) of Mars and gave it a roughly 1,000 mph speed boost while nudging its orbital plane by about 1 degree on the way to the metallic asteroid 16 Psyche, which it is set to reach in 2029 to map and study whether it preserves an early planet's core.