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Messenger Flies by Mercury
Riding with Robots writes "Today, more than three decades after the last spacecraft visited Mercury, Messenger buzzed just 200 kilometers above the planet's surface. During the encounter, the robotic spacecraft conducted a range of scientific observations, including imaging swaths of Mercury's surface that have never been seen up close before. A few of the first pictures are now available, with many more to come in the next few days."
Hats off to the folks who put this together. I was in high school the last time we saw any closeup pictures of Mercury. Every time we send probes to other panets we find out really cool stuff. Messenger should be no exception.
If we can't go there ourselves, we can send robots. Robots are cool. :-)
...laura
The first images from the close approach will not be available until 01/05/08
That should be 01/15/08. After 15:00 EST.Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Those are just the approach images, the shots taken up through yesterday that show what the probe saw as it was speeding toward the planet. The close-ups taken today will be downloaded and posted over the coming hours and days. http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/
Saddle up: Riding with Robots
Well, it'll go into orbit eventually, so yes. Hopefully.
And even without getting a lot closer, this is *huge*. Fully 55% of Mercury's surface has never been imaged by spacecraft (and cannot really be imaged well from the ground), so we don't have a very good idea what more than half the planet looks like. This flyby, I'm told, well see about half of the un-imaged area.
There's a really nice animation on the Flyby 1 page: 10Mb version, 84Mb version.
I'm an infovore...
Or... a Predator! *ducks*
That can't be real! There aren't any stars in the background!
Technoli
Perhaps you took the astrology course by mistake?
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Section of Reworked Venera-13 Image http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_DigitalImages.htm Checkout the venus pics if you havent already from the link above. Mercury surface pics would be cool.
The first images from the close approach will not be available until 01/05/08
Could we please use unambiguous date formatting?
Something like YYYY-MM-DD?
I guess you actually meant 2008-01-15 with a typo.
That's no moon...
Mr. Universe: "They can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."
I for one welcome our Predator ducks overlords.
Sorry.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Nothing beats those astrology and cosmetology courses.
That would be one hot ass!
Just as in Biology, a lot of what is observed in Astronomy is what's big, pretty, and easy. Venus and Mercury are two planets that are largely unappealing by normal standards - way too hot, completely dead and barren. It's always good to see good science being done for the sake of science, not public opinion. Cassini and the rovers were fantastic, but the less glamorous missions are just as important to our understanding.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
*clearly* he meant 01/15/8000000000008 , which in in the Mecurian calendar means the first month, fifteenth day in the 8-Trillion-and-8th Mecurian solar rotation.
Plus, the Mercury citizens have learned to simply abbreviate as '08' on their paper calendars-- if you write all the zeros, the paper calendars usually catch fire before you are done-- so it's important to write quickly!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
stare for a tenth of a second at the Sun through 8x binoculars. then you will have some idea why a camera that can image mercury's sunlit surface can't detect stars.
It's just taking them a bit longer than usual to 'shop out all the UFO's.
There's a planet with a serious global warming problem.
How is 2008-01-05 unambiguous?
ISO 8601.
Additionally, I'm completely unaware of anyone or anyplace using
YYYY-DD-MM as a date format, and my googleing seems to confirm that.
Part of the problem, too, is that it's really tricky to get to Mercury due to the amount of delta-v you need to shed Earth orbit, plus unlike Mars, Mercury has a negligible atmosphere which makes aerobraking useless. That's why they did three slingshot maneuvers to get there. The navigation team at JPL has really outdone themselves with this flight, and are to be commended.
It actually takes more delta-v to get to the sun than it takes to leave the solar system from here. This is why that whole "send dangerous waste to the sun" is a really bad idea. It takes a huge amount of fuel and if you miss, you've got a dangerous payload in a highly eccentric orbit that almost certainly crosses the Earth's. What could possibly go wrong? :-)
And maybe it's because I'm a space nerd, but I think MESSENGER is glamorous as hell.
Interestingly enough, the navigation of this flight was outsourced to Kintex. The mission itself is managed by APL... AFAIK, JPL wasn't particularly involved.
This is assuming of course that the garbage is pointed at the sun and timed so it wouldn't get close enough to Venus and Mercury to divert it's course. Why would getting away from the sun be easier than going towards it?
If you point it right at the Sun from ground perspective, it will just come back to circle the Earth unless propelled really hard. One needs to find a way to bleed sun-orbiting speed off of it. There's no free lunch.
Table-ized A.I.
With regards to you second question, unless the highly inclined orbit was altered again at perigee and apogee with respect to the sun, your payload would return to the Earth's orbit.
Note: I am not a rocket scientist, at least not for a while, but I have done a bit of interplanetary stuff like this. All the numbers come from google. And it is entirely possible I'm quite mistaken, but I hope this was a bit helpful.
Marvin knew: "Think of a number, any number..."
200km! Wow, that's incredibly close to Mercury. For comparison's sake, geosynchronous orbit (where all our TV and most communication satellites live) are at 36,371 km from earth, 181 times as far as this probe went to mercury. Even the highest resolution earth imaging satellites we have orbit at around 500km.
While you can't scoop up the dirt, being that close for visuals has to be nearly as good as landing there...
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.