On 24 October 2006, at 8:34 UTC (4:34 a.m. EDT), NASA’s Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft swung by Venus and came within 2,990 kilometers (1,860 miles) of the surface of Venus. According to the mission’s Principal Investigator Sean Solomon, the second flyby in June 2007 will provide a full suite of scientific observations. For more information click here.

Left: Image of Venus snapped by the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) from a distance of about 16.5 million kilometers. Courtesy: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Nader Haghighipour, a theoretical astrophysicist and former DTM Postdoctoral Fellow from 9/1/2001 through 8/31/2004, and Ada Demleitner (a research manager for InterMedia), tied the knot in the Haiku Gardens in Kaneohe, Hawaii. The couple, who met in Washington, DC, were married on Saturday, 21 October 2006. Nader is now at the Institute for Astronomy and NASA Astrobiology Institute, University of Hawaii-Manoa, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Photos courtesy of former DTM Postdoctoral Fellow Cecily Wolfe (Hawaii Institute of Geophysics & Planetology), who attended the wedding.