Credit: APL.

Last evening, DTM Director and Principal Investigator of the MESSENGER mission to orbit Mercury, Sean Solomon, his team, and the MESSENGER spacecraft, certainly had the luck of the Irish with them on St. Patrick's Day.

On 17 March 2011, at 9:10 p.m., EDT, engineers in the MESSENGER Mission Operations Center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, received the anticipated radiometric signals confirming nominal burn shutdown and successful insertion of the MESSENGER probe into orbit around the Planet Mercury.  At 9:45 p.m., EDT, MESSENGER started transmitting data.

MESSENGER's main thruster fired for approximately 15 minutes at 8:45 p.m., slowing the spacecraft by 1,929 miles per hour (862 meters per second) and easing it into the planned eccentric orbit about Mercury.  The rendezvous took place about 96 million miles (155 million kilometers) from Earth.

To read the complete news release, click here.

MESSENGER Project Manager Peter Bedini, PI Sean Solomon, and APL's Public Affairs mediator Michael Buckley.  Credit: J. Dunlap.