MeRcUrY iN cOlOr

Mercury Re-Mix

click on photo to see smiling face :*)

Planet Mercury does look like Earth's Moon. Mercury is the first rock globe, closest to the Sun, that does not have an atmosphere. The second nearest rock globe, orbiting around the Sun (and Earth), without an atmosphere, IS Earth's Moon....

The Messenger probe has delivered some fresh close-ups of Planet Mercury's surface back to Planet Earth. This space robot mercenary still has other post cards on the way.

Mercury On Fire

How much closer can land get to the Solar Globe?

Here is a picture of the mathematician who made the missions to Planet Mercury possible...

Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo (1920-1984)

Another Red-Letter-Day for NASA (this stuff is getting exciting):

MESSENGER Mission News
January 15, 2008
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu

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Mercury Flyby Observations Are on the Way!

At 16:30 UTC (11:30 a.m. EST) today, MESSENGER flight controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., received the first telemetry from the spacecraft following the probe’s closest approach to Mercury yesterday. All spacecraft subsystems and instruments are operating normally, and telemetry data indicate that the command sequence during the flyby executed as expected.

The data from the probe – which include 1,213 images – are scheduled to start coming down to the Deep Space Network in Canberra, Australia in a few hours. As soon as the downlink transmission is complete, the MESSENGER Science Team will complete the processing of the first images.

“We are delighted with the successful outcome of the flyby,” said MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. “The MESSENGER team is now eagerly awaiting the return of all of the scientific observations made over the past two days. We hope to share, within the next 24 hours, a first look at the side of Mercury never before seen at close range.”

Additional information and features from this first flyby will be available online at http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/mer_flyby1.html. Following the flyby, be sure to check for the latest released images and science results!

Happy New Year 2008:

Today, January 14, 2008, the space probe Messenger arrived at Planet Mercury. Tomorrow, January 15, 2008, it shall deliver the mail back down to Good-Old-Earth:

Spacecraft sails past Mercury in first visit in three decades

The first spacecraft to visit the solar system's smallest and innermost planet in more than 30 years has zipped past Mercury and snapped the first pictures of its "night side," which faces away from the Sun.

The Messenger spacecraft passed 124 miles above the planet during its flyby and was expected to take more than 1,200 images, including portions of the surface missed during the last U.S. mission to the Sun's neighbor in 1975. The first close-ups are expected tomorrow.

Messenger will fly past Mercury again in October and September 2009 as it prepares for a yearlong orbit of the planet in March 2011.