NASA Celebrates MESSENGER Mission Prior to Surface Impact on Planet Mercury

NASA Cel­e­brates MESSENGER Mis­sion Pri­or to Sur­face Impact on Plan­et Mercury



NASA,MErcury Surface,Space ENvironment,GEochemistry,and Ranging,(MESSENGER) spacecraft,planet Mercury,James Green,Sean Solomon,Helene Winters,Daniel O’Shaughnessy,mercury mission



NASA held a pan­el dis­cus­sion media on Thurs­day, April 16, to share sci­en­tif­ic find­ings and tech­ni­cal accom­plish­ments of the agency’s MEr­cury Sur­face, Space ENvi­ron­ment, GEo­chem­istry, and Rang­ing (MESSENGER) spacecraft.

After more than 10 years in space, the high­ly suc­cess­ful mis­sion will come to an end when it is expect­ed to col­lide into plan­et Mer­cury at a speed of more than 8,750 miles per hour (3.91 km/sec) near the end of this month.

Launched in August 2004, MESSENGER trav­eled 4.9 bil­lion miles (7.9 bil­lion kilo­me­ters) — a jour­ney that includ­ed 15 trips around the sun and fly­bys of Earth once, Venus twice, and Mer­cury three times — before it was insert­ed into orbit around its tar­get plan­et in March 2011. The space­craft’s cam­eras and oth­er sophis­ti­cat­ed, high-tech­nol­o­gy instru­ments have col­lect­ed unprece­dent­ed images and made oth­er obser­va­tions. Mis­sion man­agers are prepar­ing to impact Mer­cury’ sur­face in the next cou­ple weeks.

Par­tic­i­pants fea­tured were:

· James Green, direc­tor, Plan­e­tary Sci­ence Divi­sion, NASA Head­quar­ters, Washington
· Sean Solomon, MESSENGER prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor; direc­tor, Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty’s Lam­ont-Doher­ty Earth Obser­va­to­ry, Pal­isades, New York
· Helene Win­ters, MESSENGER project man­ag­er, Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty Applied Physics Lab­o­ra­to­ry, Lau­rel, Maryland
· Daniel O’Shaughnessy, MESSENGER sys­tems engi­neer, Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty Applied Physics Lab­o­ra­to­ry, Lau­rel, Maryland



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