Best of What's New 2011

Aviation & Space

NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab Messenger

Now in orbit around Mercury

Aviation & Space 9 of 10

In March, NASA’s Messenger probe became the first spacecraft to enter Mercury’s orbit. Using seven scientific instruments, including a spectrometer and a laser altimeter, the probe is measuring the composition of the atmosphere, mapping the planet’s surface, and helping scientists better understand Mercury’s unusual density, active magnetic field and ultra-thin atmosphere. Almost immediately on arrival, the probe sent back the first close-up photos taken of the planet since Mariner 10 passed by en route to the sun in 1975. Since its launch in 2004, Messenger has traveled a circuitous 5.47 billion miles, performing multiple flybys of Earth, Venus and its destination planet.

2 Comments

Link to this comment

Robert1234

11/18/11 at 4:59 am

Robert1234 So very cool, huh? To bad we won't likely be building any more of these. Two many people out there we need to kill, or at least we suspect them and so have to kill them.

Link to this comment

TomP

11/21/11 at 9:17 pm

Robert1234 please be patient. The relatively unheralded laboratory that built launched, and operates Messenger is right now doing the same with a mission to Pluto. APL has often demonstrated that enormous budgets are not the only means to significant scientific advances. As a forty year veteran of the laboratory (retired in 2001), I look with pride at these accomplishments.