NASA's Psyche Mission Captures Crescent Mars Ahead of 2029 Asteroid Arrival
The observation serves as a test for instruments before a gravity assist flyby scheduled for May 15.
NASA's Psyche spacecraft has transmitted a colourised image of Mars taken on May 3, 2026, from a distance of approximately 3 million miles. The picture, acquired by the mission's multispectral imager, shows the Red Planet as a thin crescent against a starless background. This view was captured using the instrument's panchromatic filter with an exposure time of just two milliseconds.
The spacecraft is currently en route to the metal-rich asteroid Psyche, with a scheduled gravity assist flyby of Mars set for May 15. This manoeuvre is designed to boost the spacecraft's velocity and adjust its trajectory for an expected arrival at the asteroid in 2029. The image of Mars serves primarily as a calibration exercise for the cameras ahead of this close approach rather than a primary scientific target.
In the photograph, Mars appears as a slender crescent due to the high-phase angle viewing geometry, where the Sun is positioned out of frame and above the planet. Sunlight reflected off the surface and scattered by atmospheric dust creates the visible glow, which appears to extend further than it would without an atmosphere. The rapid variability of atmospheric dust on Mars made the anticipated brightness of the crescent difficult to predict prior to the image acquisition.
A distinct gap is visible in the extended crescent on the right side of the image, corresponding to the planet's icy north polar cap. Mission specialists hypothesise that seasonal clouds and hazes forming in that region during winter may be preventing atmospheric dust from scattering sunlight, unlike elsewhere on the planet. However, the specific extent and density of these weather patterns remain a hypothesis based on the visual gap alone.
The Psyche mission team plans to acquire and process similar images in the lead-up to the May 15 flyby to characterise camera performance in flight. This practice run ensures the instruments are ready for the final approach to asteroid Psyche. The observation highlights the dynamic nature of Martian atmospheric conditions, where dust quantities can change rapidly over time.
