The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
Such a maneuver is necessary because as the spacecraft travels around the Sun, the star’s huge gravitational field makes the spacecraft’s speed much faster (it actually falls “toward” the Sun without actually falling “into” it).
Its speed becomes faster than the orbital speed of Mercury. It needs to slow down to a speed appropriate for insertion into orbit about the planet.
The gravity assist maneuver slows the spacecraft down to a much lower speed so that it can eventually settle into an orbit about the planet.
At that time, MESSENGER will become the first human-made spacecraft to orbit Mercury.
During its mission in orbit about Mercury, MESSENGER will determine the composition of its surface. Instruments will determine chemical differences between the planet’s two hemispheres and will provide details never before captured about physical features of the planet.
The MESSENGER spacecraft was launched at 2:15:56 Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on August 3, 2004, by a Boeing Delta II 7925H-9.4 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida (U.S.A.).
It is expected to be inserted into an orbit about Mercury on or about March 11, 2011. At that time, the MESSENGER spacecraft will have covered about a 4.9-billion-mile journey of over 15 trips around the Sun, including trips past Earth ( August 2005) and Venus (October 2006 and June 2007).
Besides MESSENGER, NASA’s Mariner 10 is the only other human probe to visit the planet Mercury. Mariner 10 flew by Mercury on March 29, 1974, September 21, 1974, and March 16, 1975.
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
