Already 26 million km (16 million miles) from Earth, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft will arrive at its target asteroid Psyche in 2029. The Psyche team wanted to test all of the science instruments early in the long journey to make sure they are working as intended, and to ensure there would be plenty of time to calibrate and adjust them as needed. The imager instrument, which consists of a pair of identical cameras, captured a total of 68 images, all within a star field in the constellation of Pisces.
Psyche is a NASA mission to study a metal-rich asteroid with the same name, located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
This is NASA’s first mission to study an asteroid that has more metal than rock or ice.
The spacecraft launched October 13, 2023, at 10:19 a.m. EDT aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center.
By August 2029, it will begin exploring the asteroid that scientists think — because of its high metal content — may be the partial core of a planetesimal, a building block of an early planet.
The Psyche imager takes pictures through multiple color filters, all of which were tested in these initial observations.
With the filters, the Psyche team will use photographs in wavelengths of light both visible and invisible to the human eye to help determine the composition of the asteroid.
The imager team will also use the data to create 3D maps of the asteroid to better understand its geology, which will give clues about Psyche’s history.
“These initial images are only a curtain-opener,” said Psyche imager instrument lead Jim Bell, a researcher at Arizona State University.
“For the team that designed and operates this sophisticated instrument, first light is a thrill.”
“We start checking out the cameras with star images like these, then in 2026 we’ll take test images of Mars during the spacecraft’s flyby.”
“And finally, in 2029 we’ll get our most exciting images yet — of our target asteroid…
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