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MESSENGER to Fly by Mercury on 6 October |
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Friday, 03 October 2008 |
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3 October 2008: MESSENGER spies Mercury. JHU/APL.
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On 6 October, for the second time in less than a year, the MESSENGER spacecraft will fly by Mercury, just 200 km above the surface, snapping hundreds of pictures and collecting a variety of other data from the planet as the probe gains a critical gravity assist that will keep it on track to become the first spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury beginning in March 2011.
“The results from MESSENGER’s first flyby of Mercury in January resolved debates that are more than 30 years old,” principal investigator and DTM director Sean Solomon commented. “Volcanic eruptions produced many of Mercury’s plains, its magnetic field appears to be actively generated in a molten iron core, and the planet has contracted more than we thought.” This second encounter, says Solomon, will uncover even more information about the planet.
For more information, see the MESSENGER Web site.
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