NASA's Psyche Probe Uses Mars Gravity Assist to Reshape Asteroid Mission

On May 15, a spacecraft the size of a kitchen table will pass close enough to Mars to borrow its gravity — not as a detour, but as the very architecture of its journey toward a metal-rich asteroid that may hold the exposed heart of a failed planet. The Psyche mission, years in the making, arrives at this moment as a testament to the human habit of reaching toward the unreachable by working with the forces of the cosmos rather than against them. What unfolds in those few hours will determine whether a 2029 rendezvous with a world unlike any visited before remains possible.