NASA has released a month-long time-lapse video showing its Psyche spacecraft approaching, flying past, and moving away from Mars during a gravity-assist maneuver completed on May 15, 2026. By treating Mars as a stand-in for asteroid Psyche, engineers tested the spacecraft's camera, magnetometer, and gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer before the probe reaches its destination. It was very gratifying to see," David Lawrence, science lead for Psyche's spectrometer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, said in the NASA mission blog. Time-Lapse Captures Rare Views of Mars and Its MoonsThe newly released month-long time-lapse combines images captured from early May through the spacecraft's departure after the flyby. "The imager performed brilliantly, delivering some rarely seen views of the Red Planet," Jim Bell, Psyche imager instrument lead at Arizona State University, said in the NASA mission blog.