Note: Single-source report; awaiting corroboration.
NASA’s Psyche mission captured an image of Mars as a crescent on May 15, 2026, while approaching the planet for a gravity assist maneuver. The spacecraft’s multispectral imager took the picture at about 5:03 a.m. PDT, showing Mars illuminated by sunlight at a high phase angle, which created the crescent effect.
The crescent appeared brighter and extended further around Mars' disk than expected, due to strong scattering of sunlight through the planet’s dusty atmosphere. The image was taken with Imager A and processed into a natural-color view using red, green, and blue data from its filters, approximating human vision.
This was the last image to show the entire planet before Mars began overfilling the camera's field of view during Psyche’s close approach.