NASA Spacecraft Captures Rare Crescent Mars Ahead of Friday’s Flyby

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft released a new colorized image of Mars, showing the planet as a thin crescent from about 3 million miles away.

The image was taken ahead of a May 15 gravity-assist maneuver, a key step in the spacecraft’s journey.

The Mars flyby will use the planet’s gravity to help conserve fuel and send Psyche onward toward asteroid 16 Psyche.

The mission aims to study one of the solar system’s most unusual metal-rich asteroids when it arrives in 2029.