A NASA spacecraft launched in 2004 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is on track to enter orbit around Mercury in one year. "We are finally closing in on the most intense phase of the mission," said Sean Solomon, principal investigator for the Messenger spacecraft, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
"Messenger's six-and-a-half years of interplanetary flight are a long warm-up for the main event, when we are in orbit about Mercury. The final year of that flight will be a busy time for the team, as we review orbital operation plans for all spacecraft subsystems."
Click here to read NASA's release.
Messenger's planned 4.9-billion mile journey to the solar system's innermost planet will include 15 trips around the sun, flying past Earth once, Venus twice and Mercury three times. During three flyby's of Mercury, Messenger has already mapped nearly the entire planet's surface. The spacecraft is the first to visit Mercury since Mariner 10, which mapped less than half of the planet during three flybys in 1974-75.
IMAGES: Above, Messenger's Aug. 3, 2004, launch aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket. Credit: NASA. Below, a false color mosaic shows the eastern limb of Mercury as seen by the Messenger spacecraft as it departed the planet following the mission's first Mercury flyby in January 2008.
No comments:
Post a Comment