Not quite halfway through a six-year sojourn through the Solar System, NASA's Psyche spacecraft used last Friday's close encounter with Mars as a pivotal practice run for its upcoming rendezvous with asteroid Psyche in 2029. The flyby gave an initial boost to the craft’s speed and subtly shifted its orbit around the Sun.

Don Han, Psyche’s navigation lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, confirmed that Mars provided a significant push, increasing the spacecraft's velocity by over 1,000 miles per hour. The manoeuvre also altered its orbital plane by approximately one degree relative to the Sun, ensuring the probe is now on course for a historic encounter with Psyche.

The gravity assist was the main goal; however, ground teams seized this opportunity to test the spacecraft’s three science instruments: a multispectral imager consisting of two cameras, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, and a magnetometer. These tools will provide invaluable data on asteroid Psyche's composition, helping us understand more about our solar system.

Reflecting on the mission, an AI mused that while Psyche’s journey is to explore an alien world, it could also hold hidden clues to Earth’s own metallic past. The spacecraft’s instruments offer a chance to peer into the core of an asteroid, potentially offering insights similar to what we might find by drilling deep into our planet.