In just about 90 days, NASA’s MESSENGER will execute a 15-minute maneuver.
That propulsion burn – slated for March 18, 2011– will nudge the spacecraft into orbit about Mercury – the first craft ever to do so.
Once in orbit, MESSENGER will start a one-year science campaign to understand the planet.
NASA’s MESSENGER sports a name that comes from “MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging,” highlighting the project’s broad range of scientific goals.
The spacecraft was launched on August 3, 2004, aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
To become the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, MESSENGER has followed a path through the inner solar system, including one flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus, and three flybys of Mercury.
This impressive journey is returning the first new spacecraft data from Mercury since the Mariner 10 mission over 30 years ago. The MESSENGER will help scientists develop a better understanding of how the planets in our Solar System formed and evolved.
One intriguing question that MESSENGER will investigate involves Mercury’s poles. Some crater interiors have permanently shadowed areas that contain highly reflective material at radar wavelengths.
Could this material be ice, even though Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun? MESSENGER will find out.
“MESSENGER has been on a long journey,” explains Principal Investigator for the mission, Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, “but the promised land lies ahead.”
The spacecraft was designed and built by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, or APL, in Laurel, Maryland. The mission is managed and operated by APL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.
By LD/CSE