2026年5月14日 美国东部时间上午9:50 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
作者：艾米莉·梅·查霍尔
美国国家航空航天局（NASA）一艘前往小行星带的航天器将于本周周五飞越火星，计划借助火星的引力场节省推进剂，以完成这场为期六年的航程的后半段。
这艘以其将探测的稀有小行星命名为“灵神星”的航天器于2023年10月发射升空。当时它开启了一段22亿英里的旅程，前往这颗富含金属的天体，科学家认为该天体可能揭示地球等行星的内核最初是如何形成的线索。
据NASA介绍，灵神星号航天器将非常近距离地飞越火星，最近距离火星表面仅2800英里。该机构表示，航天器将以约12333英里每小时的速度绕行星借力飞行，“将借助火星的引力加速并调整飞往小行星的轨道”。
这颗被科学家称为“金属世界”和“太阳系中最不寻常的天体之一”的小行星位于火星和木星之间的小行星带。NASA的探测器预计将于2029年底抵达目标小行星并开始绕其运行。
不过，航天器将利用此次机会观测火星。运营团队已经发布了一张在约300万英里外拍摄的火星图像。
NASA表示，运营团队计划利用周五飞越期间获取的观测数据制作此次相遇的延时影像。亚利桑那州立大学的吉姆·贝尔在一份声明中表示，部分图像中火星可能不会呈现标志性的红色调，但他仍预计这些图像“会相当美丽”。
航天器还将测试一项卫星功能，该功能未来可用于搜寻灵神星轨道周围的天体。
“不过归根结底，这次飞越的唯一目的是借助火星的助力加速并调整轨道，朝向灵神星小行星飞行，”航天器运营团队的首席研究员林迪·埃尔金斯-坦顿在另一份声明中说道。“但如果我们所有仪器都能正常启动，并且能够对科学仪器进行重要的测试和校准，那将是锦上添花。”
小行星带中仅有少数天体被认为像灵神星一样富含金属，科学家认为灵神星含有镍和铁。根据NASA的任务概述，他们推测这颗小行星可能是一颗岩石行星裸露的内核，有望为了解地球等行星的形成和演化提供见解。
进入灵神星轨道后，NASA的航天器计划在约两年的时间内拍摄小行星表面的照片，并揭示其构成。
威廉·哈伍德对本文亦有贡献。
NASA spacecraft to fly past Mars this week, on voyage to rare metal asteroid
May 14, 2026 9:50 AM EDT / CBS News
By Emily Mae Czachor
A NASA spacecraft headed toward the asteroid belt will fly past Mars on Friday, aiming to get a boost from the planet’s gravitational field and save some of the propellant it needs to complete the second half of a six-year voyage.
The spacecraft, called Psyche after the rare asteroid it will explore, launched in October 2023. At the time, it set out on a 2.2-billion-mile journey to the metal-rich celestial rock, which scientists believe may hold clues about how the cores of planets like Earth initially formed.
Psyche will travel quite close to Mars, coming within just 2,800 miles of the red planet’s surface at its nearest point, according to NASA. Slingshotting past at about 12,333 miles per hour, the spacecraft “will harness the planet’s gravitational pull to speed up and adjust its trajectory” toward the asteroid, the agency said.
The asteroid that scientists have described as a “metal world” and “one of the more unusual objects in our solar system” sits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. NASA’s explorer is expected to approach and begin orbiting the ultimate target of its mission at the end of 2029.
But the spacecraft will take advantage of the opportunity to observe Mars in the meantime. The team operating it has already released an image of the planet from about 3 million miles away.
This image of Mars was captured by NASA’s Psyche mission on May 3, 2026, about 3 million miles from the planet. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
NASA said the operators plan to use the observations taken during Friday’s flyby to compile a time-lapse of the encounter. One of them, Jim Bell of Arizona State University, said in a statement that Mars may not have its characteristic reddish hue in some of the images, although he still anticipates they’ll be “just plain beautiful.”
The spacecraft will also be able to test a satellite feature that it could eventually use to search for objects in the asteroid Psyche’s orbit.
“Ultimately, though, the only reason for this flyby is to get a little help from Mars to speed us up and tilt our trajectory in the direction of the asteroid Psyche,” said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, a lead investigator on the spacecraft’s operations teams, in another statement. “But if all our instruments are powered up, and we can do important testing and calibration of the science instruments, that would be the icing on the cake.”
blob:https://www.cbsnews.com/6d02b7b0-1b21-4d6d-9cb2-ca57b8a85e14
Only a small portion of the objects floating in the asteroid belt are believed to be rich in metal like the asteroid Psyche, which scientists believe contains nickel and iron. They suspect it may be the exposed core of a rocky planet, potentially offering insights the formations and evolutions of planets like our own, according to NASA’s mission overview.
Once in the asteroid’s orbit, NASA’s spacecraft is slated to take pictures of the asteroid’s surface and shed light on its composition, over the course of about two years.
William Harwood contributed to this report.
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