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Spacecraft Buzzes By Mercury

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the it's-time-to-buzz-the-planet dept.

Riding with Robots writes "The robotic spacecraft MESSENGER is making its second fly-by of the first planet today, skimming just 200 kilometers above the surface. The fly-by will reveal portions of the planet that have never been seen before, but the main purpose of the maneuver is to prepare for an orbital insertion in 2011. The mission site offers extensive information, along with the first pictures that are already arriving on Earth, with many more expected in the coming hours and days."

5 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. The coldest place by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Larry Niven's first published short story was titled "The Coldest Place" (collected in 3 Books of Known Space ), based on the idea that the regions of Mercury not hit by the sun would be the coldest place in the solar system. The story was infamous out of date by the time it hit print, as some studies of Mercury had shown that it never got that cold. Nonetheless, reading the story as a child awoke a certain interest of that planet which never gets as much attention as the sexier Mars or Venus or the gas giants. I look forward to following this mission.

    1. Re:The coldest place by DerekLyons · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Mercury doesn't get as much interest as Venus because it is very, very hard to get to and has an extremely hostile orbital environment once you get there. Venus gets less attention than Mars because it very hard to get there, has a hostile orbital environment and very difficult to learn anything once you do because of the cloud cover.
       
      Mars, by comparison, is merely hard to get to, has a relatively benign orbital environment, and has a transparent atmosphere.

  2. Question on why so long a time to establish orbit? by blahbooboo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Could someone please explain why according to the web site the orbit insertion is going to take another pass and another 3 years. Does it really take that long to slow the spacecraft down?

  3. MESSENGER used solar sailing by rotenberry · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Note that MESSENGER used solar sailing to correct its trajectory for this flyby:

    http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001674/

  4. we should be doing more of this by jagdish · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is what we should be doing, instead of quibbling over small things like creationism and Paris Hilton. We should launch several satellites orbiting each planet and few satellites for some of the more interesting moons(Europa, io etc)