MESSENGER spacecraft to slingshot Mercury

William Atkins
Thursday, 02 October 2008 18:21

Science - Space

The NASA spacecraft MESSENGER is poised to flyby Mercury again on October 6, 2008. The first flyby, on January 14th of this year, was a humdinger, and the second one is expected to be even better as the spacecraft prepares to gravitationally slingshot itself into an orbit about the planet in 2011.


The MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging spacecraft, better known as MESSENGER, will be flying pass Mercury about 125 miles (200 kilometers) above the planet’s surface.

The spacecraft was named based on the Roman mythological figure Mercury, who was the “messenger” of the gods.

Carnegie Institution of Washington scientist Sean C. Solomon, the principal investigator for the mission, states, “The results from MESSENGER's first flyby of Mercury resolved debates that are more than 30 years old.This second encounter will uncover even more information about the planet." [NASA: “NASA'S Messenger Spacecraft Returns To Mercury"]

NASA reports that the first flyby photographed about 20% of the planet that had never before been seen by human eyes.

The images “showed that 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 previously thought.” [NASA]

In fact, read more about the exciting discoveries (including water in its exosphere) found during the first flyby at The Planetary Society’s website “MESSENGER Scientists 'Astonished' to Find Water in Mercury's Thin Atmosphere.”

At the time that MESSENGER’s Fast Imaging Plasma Spectrometer (FIPS) found large amounts of water on the planet, Thomas Zurbuchen, MESSENGER science team member, exclaimed, "Nobody expected that. I don't know a single person that did. We were astonished, just astonished.” [The Planetary Society]

Read page two for more details on the second flyby of Mercury.