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Messenger En Route To Mercury
Soft writes "NASA's Messenger space probe has lifted off on its second try on a Delta 2-Heavy rocket.
As mentioned earlier on Slashdot, it is poised to orbit Mercury in 2011 after three flybys, as well as two flybys of Venus and one of Earth for course corrections.
It will be the first probe to visit the innermost planet since Mariner 10 in 1974 and 1975.
Stories on the BBC and SpaceflightNow."
!!!1 ha ha
YET ANOTHER QUALITY STORY fuckdot rejected!
Alcohol sharpens your brain, say researchers
By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent
(Filed: 01/08/2004)
It is news guaranteed to raise a cheer among those who enjoy a glass or two: drinking half a bottle of wine a day can make your brain work better, especially if you are a woman.
Research to be published tomorrow by academics at University College London has found that those who even drink only one glass of wine a week have significantly sharper thought processes than teetotallers.
Sir Michael Marmot of UCL led the study
The benefits of alcohol, which are thought to be linked to its effect on the flow of blood to the brain, can be detected when a person drinks up to 30 units of alcohol - about four to five bottles of wine - per week.
The researchers were unable to test the effect of higher levels of alcohol consumption, although drunkenness probably negates any positive effects on the brain.
The findings have surprised health officials, who issued yet another warning last week about the dangers of overdrinking.
According to figures released by the Office for National Statistics, one in six women now drinks more than the Government's recommended limit of 14 units of alcohol a week - an increase of 70 per cent since the late 1980s. The recommended maximum weekly intake for men is 21 units.
The latest findings on the benefits of alcohol are drawn from a study of the long-term health of 10,000 British civil servants. Known as the Whitehall Study, it was originally set up in 1967 to identify links between health and factors ranging from smoking and obesity to age and social status.
In the latest research, a team led by Sir Michael Marmot, a professor of epidemiology and public health at University College London, gave psychometric tests to more than 6,000 civil servants.
The questions ranged from verbal and mathematical reasoning problems to tests of short-term memory. The civil servants' performance was then matched against their drinking habits.
The study took into account all alcohol consumption and was not specific to wine. However, the results showed that those having even a single glass of wine a week scored significantly higher in the tests than more abstemious drinkers. Teetotallers were twice as likely as occasional drinkers to achieve the lowest scores.
The benefits were most marked among women drinkers and, to the researchers' surprise, showed no sign of flattening out with increasing consumption.
Those who downed the equivalent of half a bottle of wine or two pints of beer a day scored best of all. The effects were apparent even after the results had been adjusted to take into account factors such as physical and mental health.
"Our results appear to suggest some specificity in the association between alcohol consumption and cognitive ability," said the team. "Frequent drinking may be more beneficial than drinking only on special occasions."
The team, whose findings are being reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology, suggests that the results may reflect the fact that alcohol can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and increase blood flow to the brain - factors linked to improved mental function.
The researchers also speculate that women might benefit more because of the different way in which they metabolise alcohol. However, they acknowledge that the benefits of alcohol can be outweighed by the increased risks of getting diseases such as cancer and cirrhosis, and that the findings should not be used as an excuse for heavier drinking.
Dr Guy Ratcliffe, the medical director of the Medical Council on Alcohol, said that the study would add to earlier evidence that moderate drinking could be beneficial - offering advantages such as a reduced risk of heart disease and
Heil Hitler!
Not exactly Instant Messenger, is it?
Looks like Microsoft is using it's influence with the space agency to promote it's service in Mercury!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and Small furry creatures are from Alpha Centauri.
So what the heck is there on Mercury? :-)
At first glance, I though MSN Messenger got 0wnz...
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
So the rocket didn't try hard enough the first time or what? Stupid write up.
Do or do not... [come now, all together]... there is no try!
(With rockets, if you try and don't succed there definitly isn't a second try).
TC - My Photos..
How did Mercury, believed to be 60 percent iron, end up with an oversize core, a thin shell of a crust and the highest density in the solar system? Was its crust blasted away in the distant past by a cataclysmic impact? Was it boiled away in the extreme heat of the young, nearby sun? Or were metals for some reason concentrated in the inner region of the solar nebula that coalesced to form the sun and planets?
Perhaps my knowledge is a little dated, but I thought that the inner four planets have higher density because the sun stripped the inner solar system of light gasses like hydrogen due to the larger mass and higher gravitational field of the sun during the formation of the sun and the solar system. Outer planets are gas giants because the Sun's (or the pre-sun center of the accretion disk ) gravitational field was not strong enough to grab the light elements from the portion of the solar system that would become the gas giants (further from the center of the pre solar system accretion disk). Also, this was thought to be why Pluto is an oddball (far away from the sun, but a frozen rock of a planet) that might be an escaped moon or oort cloud refugee.
Can anyone confirm this? Or am I citing stone age planetary science that is no longer valid?
Here
so, euhm, correct me if I'm wrong.
Mercury is closest to the sun.
So, it's not that far away from earth (considering other planets like Jupiter and Saturnus).
Is it going to take 7 freaking years to get to that burned rock ???????
From the linked BBC article:
Mercury Messenger carries seven scientific instruments to characterise the properties of its target planet.
Not sure what OS the software is running on, but it's not Quantian.
8-2-3004 2:15:56.537 EST: Departure Scan, Cape Canaveral 9-5-2005 Scan Venus gravitational assist 4-22-2008 Scan First flyby 12-14-2009 Scan Second flyby 6-12-2010 Scan Third flyby 2-01-2011 Scan Orbital Insertion ADDRESSEE NOT HOME, SIGNATURE WAIVED
Gay Nigger Astronauts Association
Next they'll try to return from Saturn with car parts.
Too bad this isn't Microsoft Messenger... they could apply service packs to Mercury and give it an atmosphere.
more space junk floating around due to Messenger popups
maybe now they'll finally find Planet Vulcan
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
MESSENGER stands for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging
I dont understand why solar-powered ion drives are not used on missions like this. Probes like the ESA SMART-1 has shown that such craft can be small & economical, and there is an abundance of solar power available for free. I understand that final orbital insertion can be a problem - could a solar ion drive deliver enough "punch", or would a supplemental booster be needed? Otherwise I understand that solar would be way more fuel/time efficient over a few years compared to carrying rocket fuel & hanging around for gravity slingshots. Am I right?
I have even read of deep-space solar-powered mission designs that head in inside mercurys orbit, grab loads of power and then head out beyond Jupiter..
Why arnt ion drives used more?
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
As another poster has pointed out, officially the name is derived thus: MESSENGER stands for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging. I was looking at this information and thought that it was a rather contrived name - kind of like the laws that the US Congress passes (PATRIOT Act, etc...) And then it occurred to me, they probably called it Messenger because in Greek mythology, Mercury was the messenger of the Gods. Or I could be completely wrong...
Seriously, the Metric/Imperial thing happened like 1999. Since then we have had Galileo end it's mission successfully, Mars Odyssey (2001), The exploration rovers, Cassini has so far performed flawlessy, and the hard part is over (Orbit insertion), NEAR, an orbiter, landed softly on an asteroid on it's solar panels, Deep Space 1 did the comet Borrelly encounter, Stardust has successfully collected the comet material (return in 2006)..and probably others that I don't remember offhand.
I mean, after so many successes, and some folks *still* don't let go. Now, if one of the probes were lost *again* due to a measurement system error then we could get a laugh out of it, but so far...they have not done that. Granted, in 1999 the *other* Mars probe, Polar lander was lost too, and so was Deep Space 2. But still...that's five years ago, and NASA has had loads of successes since then.
This is kinda starting to resemble *BSD is dying trolls..
What? Ion engines? I heard theyre so fast the driver will probably die at the really high speeds... so how would the spaceship get to mercury?
I am wonder why so many fly by's. I remeber before it was increase V, but is this being used to do a gentle park around Mercury?
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
Why aren't ion drives used more?
2 1072826.htm. (And enter "ion engine" at NASA's main site for a huge number of links.) So, it's not only ESA that have their fingers in this pie.
That's actually quite a good question, given the huge amount of power available from sunlight in the inner solar system. A continuous-burn trajectory to Mercury would probably be very much shorter than the current one; the thrust may be small, but craft speed builds up rapidly under such continuous acceleration. You'd only need to carry enough conventional chemical propellant for the final orbital insertion.
NASA has been very active on the ion-engine front -- last year it successfully completed a pretty advanced test: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/11/0311
Maybe the answer is that ion engines still need a few more years of development? Certainly not long though, since small ion thrusters are already in use, as you point out.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
We were, of course, some of the first people to know that the Messenger launch had occurred; with TS Alex to our northeast we had winds out of the north and the noise of the launch was exceptionally clear at our house. Woke me up with rattling windows and a low rumble.
they could apply service packs to Mercury and give it an atmosphere.
Except that it'd install an atmosphere which purported to keep out all future Mercury exploration missions.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
or is Slashdot buggered? The last 2 days i've had trouble getting onto it. Loads of 503 and 500 errors. I'm in the UK. Anyone else having problems here?
Mercury is at most 222 hundred thousand kilometers from earth. Messenger is traveling 7.9 billion km.
I know that there is no other good way to get it there, but I just find that interesting. I hope it has something good to read on the trip.
*and you know you got them angry when they start whining/defending "but Beagle2 was England, not ESA!" - basically admitting it was a collossal failure but trying to shift blame elsewhere (and then throwing in a US-bashing joke for good measure).
TY
I really shouldn't try to do math before coffee. It all started when I was converting miles to kilometers.... On the bright side.. it's correct on my website.
Do I get brownie points for recognizing that 7.9 billion is a bigger number? That's about the best I've done today.
Beware of the Moderators near Uranus...
When is next solar max? What are the odds of a solar
flare hitting it before it orbits mercury? What ar ethe odds of a solar
Flare hitting it early on in its orbit of mercury? Isn't mercury struck by solar flares
from time to time?
Last September the European SMART probe was launched to the Earth's Moon. It will take 15 months to arrive there by ion drive. Manned lunar missions took three days by chemical propellant.
I would consider that under par for the avarage /. poster, especially on space articles.
karma capped
after having gone by Earth on a flyby (2005?)
and by Venus twice on flybys (2007, 2008)
See this link Mercury
After a flyby of Mars in 2008, and another in 2009, it settles down for orbit in 2011.
That last long ago (30 years) visit was only a flyby.
So all that confusion is about getting the right orbital velocity to stay, plus we get good science all along the way.
Letter To Iran
of MS-Windows 95 AKA Project Chicago. Does that count for anything?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
really no text
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing