In the long human effort to understand where we come from, two spacecraft built by different agencies for different purposes briefly aligned their gaze on the same ancient Martian ground. NASA's Psyche, en route to a metal-rich asteroid that may hold clues to Earth's own formation, used Mars's gravity as a stepping stone in May 2026, while ESA's Mars Express — a veteran of more than two decades in Martian orbit — was there to observe alongside it. Together, they photographed Noachis Terra, one of the oldest landscapes in the solar system, from complementary angles within two hours of each othe