Wow, sorry little guy, you were launched in 2004 and I kind of forgot about you. Nice pictures though, thanks.
QuoteMessenger probe enters Mercury orbit
Nasa's Messenger spacecraft has successfully entered into orbit around the planet Mercury - the first probe to do so.
The robotic explorer initiated a 14-minute burn on its main thruster at 0045 GMT on Friday.
This slowed the spacecraft sufficiently to be captured by the innermost planet's gravity.
Being so close to the Sun, Mercury is a hostile place to do science. Surface temperatures would melt lead.
In this blistering environment, the probe has to carry a shield to protect it from the full glare of our star.
And even its instruments looking down at the planet have to be guarded against the intense heat coming back up off the surface.
"It was right on the money," Messenger's chief engineer, Eric Finnegan, said. "This is as close as you can possibly get to being perfect.
"Everybody was whooping and hollering; we are elated. There's a lot of work left to be done, but we are there."
The spacecraft is now some 46 million km (29 million miles) from the Sun, and about 155 million km (96 million miles) from Earth.
The orbit insertion burn by the probe's 600-newton engine will have parked it into a 12-hour, highly elliptical orbit about the planet.
Principal investigator Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, is hoping for some remarkable discoveries in coming months.
"We started the Messenger mission as a proposal to Nasa 15 years ago," he told BBC News.
"We have been building for the orbit insertion and the observations that will follow for a decade and a half.
"To say that the science team is excited about what is to come is a huge understatement. We're really pumped."
Just getting to Mercury has proved a challenge.
Messenger has had to use six planetary flybys - one of Earth, two of Venus and three of Mercury itself - to manage its speed as it ran in closer to the Sun and its deep gravity well.
The strategy devised by scientists and engineers is to have Messenger gather data with its seven instruments during the close approaches (some 200km from the surface) and then return that information to Earth when the probe is cooling off at maximum separation from the planet (up to 15,000km from the surface).
Mercury is often dismissed as a boring, featureless world that offers little to excite those who observe it, but planetary scientists who know it well beg to differ. It is a place of extraordinary extremes.
Mercury's proximity to the Sun means exposed equator surfaces can reach more than 600C; and yet there may be water-ice at the poles in craters that are in permanent shadow.
It is so dense for its size that more than two-thirds of the body has to be made of an iron-metal composition.
Mercury also retains a magnetic field, something which is absent on Venus and Mars.
In addition, the planet is deeply scarred, not just by impact craters and volcanic activity but through shrinkage; the whole body has reduced in size through Solar System history.
And Mercury fascinates because it may be our best guide to what some of the new planets might be like that are now being discovered around distant suns.
Many of these worlds also orbit very close in to their host stars.
"We'll be looking at the composition of the planet and how it ended up so dense, and what planetary formation processes gave rise to the high fraction of core," said Dr Solomon
"The answer to that question lies in the composition of the surface that we can sense remotely from orbit, but we need time in orbit to do that.
"We'll also be taking more images, but images at higher resolution and in optimum lighting compared with the conditions we had during the flybys."
Others to follow
Key to the success of the whole endeavour will be maintaining the health of Messenger in the harsh conditions it will experience.
"The sunshade is made of a ceramic material that keeps the heat on the outside of the spacecraft from getting on the inside," explained Eric Finnegan, who is affiliated to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).
"We also had to develop thermal protection for the solar arrays. We still need to generate power but we had to make sure the solar arrays themselves wouldn't melt. So, we built a solar panel that's only populated with one-third solar cells. The other two-thirds of the panel are basically mirrors to reflect the sunlight off of the panels."
The spacecraft is scheduled to remain in orbit for a year, allowing the probe to fly around Mercury 730 times.
If Messenger stays in good health and the funding allows, a one-year mission extension is likely to be granted.
The European and Japanese space agencies (Esa and Jaxa) are also sending a mission to Mercury this decade.
BepiColombo consists of two spacecraft - an orbiter for planetary investigation, led by Esa, and one for magnetospheric studies, led by Jaxa.
Dr Solomon says there will be plenty left for the duo to do and discover when they get to the innermost planet.
"We'll be collecting global data on the surface, on the interior, on the atmosphere, on the magnetosphere - but we're not going to answer all the questions; we're going to raise new ones," he told BBC News. "There's going to be ample opportunity for follow-on missions."
Pics here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12761025 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12761025)
Oh an BBC, we know short paragraphs are easier to read online, but single sentence ones all the way through just makes you look hard-of-thinking
where are the pics?
Why you people coddle people who can't use google eludes me.
Cool, good stuff, nice pics.
It's nice that it didn't fail.
Quote from: Neil on March 18, 2011, 07:58:03 AM
It's nice that it didn't fail.
Hasn't yet, at any rate-how do you stress-test the heat shield materials at that temperature?
Aren't I an optimist? :P
Either way, cool that we'll finally start getting some data gathered on Mercury.
Who wants to PBEM High Frontier? :)
I'm still eagerly awaiting the pictures from the New Horizons mission to Pluto.
Only 4 more years!
:hmm: Why? Isn't Pluto just gonna look like the moon (or maybe a big iceball)?
This one looks like the Moon. It's just a barren rock.
Quote from: Caliga on March 18, 2011, 10:11:58 AM
:hmm: Why? Isn't Pluto just gonna look like the moon (or maybe a big iceball)?
More like an iceball.
Fuck Mercury. That money could have been spent on a Europa orbiter.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 10:17:43 AM
Quote from: Caliga on March 18, 2011, 10:11:58 AM
:hmm: Why? Isn't Pluto just gonna look like the moon (or maybe a big iceball)?
More like an iceball.
Fuck Mercury. That money could have been spent on a Europa orbiter.
What makes Europa more worthy than Mercury?
Tim thinks there's life on Europa.
Mercury is full of interesting things as well.
Wow, didn't know it would take that long to get to Mercury
Quote from: Tyr on March 18, 2011, 05:26:50 PM
Wow, didn't know it would take that long to get to Mercury
It's tricky. You could get to Mercury's orbit really quickly if you wanted to, but a stable orbit around Mercury requires very precise angles and velocity, as well as a well-timed burst of thrust. A small variance will result in your Mercury probe orbiting the Sun instead.
Quote from: Neil on March 18, 2011, 12:36:26 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 10:17:43 AM
Quote from: Caliga on March 18, 2011, 10:11:58 AM
:hmm: Why? Isn't Pluto just gonna look like the moon (or maybe a big iceball)?
More like an iceball.
Fuck Mercury. That money could have been spent on a Europa orbiter.
What makes Europa more worthy than Mercury?
In the movie adaptation of
2010 I think it was important.
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on March 18, 2011, 07:53:45 PM
Quote from: Neil on March 18, 2011, 12:36:26 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 10:17:43 AM
Quote from: Caliga on March 18, 2011, 10:11:58 AM
:hmm: Why? Isn't Pluto just gonna look like the moon (or maybe a big iceball)?
More like an iceball.
Fuck Mercury. That money could have been spent on a Europa orbiter.
What makes Europa more worthy than Mercury?
In the movie adaptation of 2010 I think it was important.
Then we definitely shouldn't go there. All those worlds are ours, except for Europa.
Quote from: Neil on March 18, 2011, 12:36:26 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 10:17:43 AM
Quote from: Caliga on March 18, 2011, 10:11:58 AM
:hmm: Why? Isn't Pluto just gonna look like the moon (or maybe a big iceball)?
More like an iceball.
Fuck Mercury. That money could have been spent on a Europa orbiter.
What makes Europa more worthy than Mercury?
Europa has a subsurface ocean, and therefore likely has life.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 08:43:36 PM
Quote from: Neil on March 18, 2011, 12:36:26 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 10:17:43 AM
Quote from: Caliga on March 18, 2011, 10:11:58 AM
:hmm: Why? Isn't Pluto just gonna look like the moon (or maybe a big iceball)?
More like an iceball.
Fuck Mercury. That money could have been spent on a Europa orbiter.
What makes Europa more worthy than Mercury?
Europa has a subsurface ocean, and therefore likely has life.
What is your basis for that statement?
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on March 18, 2011, 08:53:15 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 08:43:36 PM
Quote from: Neil on March 18, 2011, 12:36:26 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 10:17:43 AM
Quote from: Caliga on March 18, 2011, 10:11:58 AM
:hmm: Why? Isn't Pluto just gonna look like the moon (or maybe a big iceball)?
More like an iceball.
Fuck Mercury. That money could have been spent on a Europa orbiter.
What makes Europa more worthy than Mercury?
Europa has a subsurface ocean, and therefore likely has life.
What is your basis for that statement?
Europa's ocean is well known, and every where on Earth where there is liquid water there is life. Earth isn't special. If something occurs on Earth, then given the same circumstances it will occur elsewhere.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 09:05:26 PM
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on March 18, 2011, 08:53:15 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 08:43:36 PM
Europa has a subsurface ocean, and therefore likely has life.
What is your basis for that statement?
Europa's ocean is well known, and every where on Earth where there is liquid water there is life. Earth isn't special. If something occurs on Earth, then given the same circumstances it will occur elsewhere.
Except circumstances on Europa are not the same as on Earth.
Quote from: Neil on March 18, 2011, 09:47:25 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 09:05:26 PM
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on March 18, 2011, 08:53:15 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 08:43:36 PM
Europa has a subsurface ocean, and therefore likely has life.
What is your basis for that statement?
Europa's ocean is well known, and every where on Earth where there is liquid water there is life. Earth isn't special. If something occurs on Earth, then given the same circumstances it will occur elsewhere.
Except circumstances on Europa are not the same as on Earth.
Liquid water and energy provided due to the tidal stresses of orbiting Jupiter. Same as the deep sea vents at the bottom of the sea.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 09:49:55 PM
Liquid water and energy provided due to the tidal stresses of orbiting Jupiter. Same as the deep sea vents at the bottom of the sea.
But not exactly. There's the cold and the radiation to contend with.
Quote from: Neil on March 18, 2011, 10:41:07 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 09:49:55 PM
Liquid water and energy provided due to the tidal stresses of orbiting Jupiter. Same as the deep sea vents at the bottom of the sea.
But not exactly. There's the cold and the radiation to contend with.
The miles of ice will protect them from the radiation. Tidal stress keeps it warm enough to be liquid, don't see the problem there.
Meh, even if there is life under there, it would probably just be invertebrates and single-celled organisms.
It's not like you're going to find a young Daryl Hannah under there.
The primitive lifeforms we bring back to study would probably wipe us out with some nasty alien virus. And if there were some kind of fish, it would far too expensive for Caliga to transport his boat there.
Quote from: Caliga on March 18, 2011, 10:11:58 AM
:hmm: Why? Isn't Pluto just gonna look like the moon (or maybe a big iceball)?
More ice than the moon, so probably more like Callisto or Ganymede, perhaps.
It will be the first good photos of Pluto, and thus of Kuiper Belt Objects.
Quote from: Tonitrus on March 18, 2011, 10:59:01 PM
Meh, even if there is life under there, it would probably just be invertebrates and single-celled organisms.
The primitive lifeforms we bring back to study would probably wipe us out with some nasty alien virus. And if there were some kind of fish, it would far too expensive for Caliga to transport his boat there.
Recovering foreign organism, esepecially complex multicellular ones would be an incredible boon for the biological sciences even if they were limited to invertebrates.
Any diseases they had would be extremely unlikely to be adapted to attacking Earth life.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 10:43:33 PM
Quote from: Neil on March 18, 2011, 10:41:07 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 09:49:55 PM
Liquid water and energy provided due to the tidal stresses of orbiting Jupiter. Same as the deep sea vents at the bottom of the sea.
But not exactly. There's the cold and the radiation to contend with.
The miles of ice will protect them from the radiation. Tidal stress keeps it warm enough to be liquid, don't see the problem there.
Liquid is still cold, and Jupiter's radiation belts are very powerful. It's not impossible, but it's not the sure thing you wish it was. And in any event, it isn't more important than the exploration of Mercury.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 11:32:18 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on March 18, 2011, 10:59:01 PM
Meh, even if there is life under there, it would probably just be invertebrates and single-celled organisms.
The primitive lifeforms we bring back to study would probably wipe us out with some nasty alien virus. And if there were some kind of fish, it would far too expensive for Caliga to transport his boat there.
Recovering foreign organism, esepecially complex multicellular ones would be an incredible boon for the biological sciences even if they were limited to invertebrates.
Any diseases they had would be extremely unlikely to be adapted to attacking Earth life.
Except we're not talking about recovering it, and neither is anyone serious.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 11:32:18 PM
Quote from: Tonitrus on March 18, 2011, 10:59:01 PM
Meh, even if there is life under there, it would probably just be invertebrates and single-celled organisms.
The primitive lifeforms we bring back to study would probably wipe us out with some nasty alien virus. And if there were some kind of fish, it would far too expensive for Caliga to transport his boat there.
Recovering foreign organism, esepecially complex multicellular ones would be an incredible boon for the biological sciences even if they were limited to invertebrates.
Any diseases they had would be extremely unlikely to be adapted to attacking Earth life.
Well damn, I guess smallpox wasn't adapted to attacking Native Americans...they must have been smothered by those blankets.
And yes, I know Native Americans aren't aliens, but the idea that alien diseases could have no effect on humans seems preposterous. There is no way anyone could possibly know.
I fully support recovering Darryl Hannah from Europa!
Who will carry the battle standard of Xerxes to the heart of Europa?
Quote from: ulmont on March 19, 2011, 02:25:07 AM
I fully support recovering Darryl Hannah from Europa!
Speak for yourself.
Europa is a icehole. Let's get on with the more serious and realistic business of colonizing the moon.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2011, 09:05:26 PM
Europa's ocean is well known, and every where on Earth where there is liquid water there is life. Earth isn't special. If something occurs on Earth, then given the same circumstances it will occur elsewhere.
Incorrect. It is suspected. There may be an ocean there. There may not be. It's also possible that the ocean only exists at certain times of the year. There is no reason to believe that Earth is not special.
Quote from: Caliga on March 18, 2011, 10:11:58 AM
:hmm: Why? Isn't Pluto just gonna look like the moon (or maybe a big iceball)?
Definitely a big iceball. With temperatures that would melt lead it's almost certain. :rolleyes:
Quote from: Martinus on March 19, 2011, 05:26:22 PM
Quote from: Caliga on March 18, 2011, 10:11:58 AM
:hmm: Why? Isn't Pluto just gonna look like the moon (or maybe a big iceball)?
Definitely a big iceball. With temperatures that would melt lead it's almost certain. :rolleyes:
Ah, Marty... Oh never mind.
Quote from: Martinus on March 19, 2011, 05:26:22 PM
Quote from: Caliga on March 18, 2011, 10:11:58 AM
:hmm: Why? Isn't Pluto just gonna look like the moon (or maybe a big iceball)?
Definitely a big iceball. With temperatures that would melt lead it's almost certain. :rolleyes:
You're thinking Mercury, not Pluto.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 20, 2011, 12:49:15 AM
Quote from: Martinus on March 19, 2011, 05:26:22 PM
Quote from: Caliga on March 18, 2011, 10:11:58 AM
:hmm: Why? Isn't Pluto just gonna look like the moon (or maybe a big iceball)?
Definitely a big iceball. With temperatures that would melt lead it's almost certain. :rolleyes:
You're thinking Mercury, not Pluto.
Oops. For some reason I thought he was talking about Mercury. Probably because I was drunk when I posted that.