The innermost planet of our Solar System, Mercury, received
the visit of NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, in the second encounter between the
two this year. On its second successful flyby past Mercury, at 1:50 a.m. EDT Monday,
MESSENGER started sending images and data back to Earth, revealing another 30
percent of the planet scientists had never seen before.
The achievement is extremely important, as the scientific
community has been eagerly waiting for new details on the smallest planet in
our Solar System for the past three decades. In January this year, MESSENGER
mapped over 20 percent of uncharted territory, and added an additional 30
percent now. “The MESSENGER team is extremely pleased by the superb performance
of the spacecraft and the payload,” said MESSENGER principal investigator Sean
Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
On October 6, at 4:40 a.m. EDT, MESSENGER successfully
completed its second flyby past Mercury, and continued its journey, which will
end in March 2011, when the spacecraft will position itself in Mercury’s orbit.
In September 2009, MESSENGER will execute a third and last Mercury flyby before
becoming the first Mercury orbital mission in the history of space exploration.
With the help of its Wide Angle Camera (WAC) and the Mercury
Dual Imaging System (MDIS) instrument, MESSENGER snapped what APL called
"spectacular" images. One of these images captured a bright crater, which was
identified as Kuiper, also captured by Mariner 10 in one of its flybys in the
1970s. East of Kuiper, MESSENGER captured views of an area with a large pattern
on rays that extend from the northern region of Mercury to regions south of
Kuiper.
Furthermore, MESSENGER’s Mercury Atmospheric and Surface
Composition Spectrometer and Mercury Laser Altimeter instruments have for the first
time gathered data of the same area of Mercury, which will allow unprecedented
studies regarding this region to be executed, APL pointed out.
The team of scientists in charge of the MESSENGER mission is
currently studying new data, including images of never-before-seen sides of
Mercury, which will hopefully give them an accurate view on the geological
history of our Solar System’s smallest planet.
MESSENGER will continue its mission in space, after
carefully adjusting its course for future missions by using Mercury’s gravity. The most
important part of the MESSENGER spacecraft right now is to successfully complete the third
flyby past Mercury, and to position itself for the final mission, which will
last for four Mercury years (or one Earth year) into the planet’s orbit.
After the three 200-kilometers (124-mile) altitude flybys
are completed, MESSENGER will enter Mercury’s orbit in March 2011, with the
mission of gathering fresh data on the surface, atmosphere and magnetosphere of
Mercury, as well as complete the mapping of the entire planet. Flight
controllers and mission analysts at the John Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory (APL) will monitor and operate the spacecraft.
