Jim Bell and his team at Arizona State University have been waiting for this moment since 2023—when NASA’s Psyche spacecraft launched on a mission to explore a metallic world unlike any ever visited. On Friday, May 15, 2026, the spacecraft streaks past Mars at 12,333 mph, coming within 2,800 miles of the planet’s surface—closer than the distance between New York and Los Angeles. This gravity assist will slingshot Psyche toward the asteroid belt, where it will study a rare, potato-shaped object that may be the shattered core of a protoplanet.
The flyby isn’t just a navigational necessity—it’s a full dress rehearsal. All of Psyche’s science instruments are active, capturing thousands of images as Mars shifts from a slender crescent to a nearly full globe in the rearview mirror. These images will help calibrate the spacecraft’s cameras and spectrometers ahead of its 2029 arrival at the 173-mile-long asteroid. At the same time, NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, along with orbiters from the U.S. and Europe, are observing Mars from the surface and space, creating a rare multi-point dataset for cross-verification.
What makes Psyche so compelling is what it might reveal about planetary origins. Scientists believe this metal-rich asteroid—only a small fraction of known asteroids share its composition—could be the exposed iron-nickel heart of a young planetesimal torn apart by ancient collisions. If confirmed, studying it up close would be like seeing Earth’s own core, which lies 1,800 miles beneath our feet and is forever inaccessible. Such insights could reshape our understanding of how rocky planets form and why some, like Earth, developed the conditions for life.
Powered by solar electric propulsion and fueled by xenon gas, the van-sized spacecraft has already traveled billions of miles on its six-year journey. When it reaches the asteroid in 2029—three times farther from the Sun than Earth—it will enter orbit and spend two years mapping, imaging, and analyzing its surface. The data could offer clues not just about our solar system’s violent youth 4.6 billion years ago, but also about the building blocks of habitable worlds.
As the images from the Mars flyby stream back to Earth, they’re more than just calibration tools—they’re a preview of discovery. "Just plain beautiful photos," Jim Bell calls them. But they’re also milestones on a path toward one of the most audacious explorations in planetary science: a journey to the metallic heart of a dead world, and a window into the birth of our own.