NASA's Psyche spacecraft returns unfamiliar views of a familiar world
“As a bonus, it captured Mars images from a rare perspective,” NASA said in a press release.
The spacecraft approached Mars from a high phase angle, or from the side opposite the Sun, making the planet appear as a thin crescent as Psyche moved in for the encounter. The wispiness of the thin Martian atmosphere was on full display, with sunlight shining through diffuse clouds of dust suspended dozens of miles over the sharp edge of the planet’s rust-colored surface.
As Psyche zoomed past the red planet, its cameras captured a wide-angle overhead view of Mars’ southern polar ice cap. Jim Bell, who leads the Psyche imager instrument team at Arizona State University, said the spacecraft took thousands of images during the encounter. The observations will help scientists “calibrate and characterize” the performance of the cameras, Bell said.
Psyche’s magnetometer may have detected a signature of the solar wind interacting...
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