On March 25, the MESSENGER spacecraft completed its 4,000th orbit of Mercury, and the lowest point in its orbit continues to move closer to the planet than ever before. The orbital phase of the MESSENGER mission, which was ...
Space Exploration
Mar 30, 2015
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MESSENGER will not go gentle into that good night. The mission will end sometime this spring, when the spacecraft runs out of propellant and the force of solar gravity causes it to impact the surface of Mercury. But the team ...
Space Exploration
Mar 19, 2015
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Close by the Sun is Mercury, a practically atmosphere-like world that has a lot of craters. Until NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft arrived there in 2008, we knew very little about the planet—only part of it had been imaged! ...
Space Exploration
Feb 20, 2015
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The MESSENGER Education and Public Outreach (EPO) Team is reminding interested parties that the competition to name five impact craters on Mercury closes on January 15, 2015. The contest, open to everyone except members of ...
Space Exploration
Jan 13, 2015
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It's always good to get a little change of perspective, and with this image we achieve just that: it's a view of Mercury's north pole projected as it might be seen from above a slightly more southerly latitude. Thanks to ...
Space Exploration
Jan 6, 2015
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Yes, it's another time-lapse of the October 8 lunar eclipse that was observed by skywatchers across half the Earth… except that these images weren't captured from Earth at all; this was the view from Mercury!
Space Exploration
Oct 13, 2014
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Ten years ago, on August 3, 2004, NASA's MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a risky mission that would take the small satellite ...
Space Exploration
Aug 5, 2014
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Are you ready for a good close look at Mercury? At an incredible 5 meters per pixel, this is one of the highest-resolution images of Mercury's surface ever captured. It was acquired on March 15 with the MESSENGER spacecraft's ...
Space Exploration
May 16, 2014
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Today, the MESSENGER team celebrates the third anniversary of the probe's Mercury orbit insertion. On March 17, 2011 (Eastern Daylight Time), the spacecraft made history when it became the first probe to orbit the innermost ...
Space Exploration
Mar 17, 2014
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What are the odds? On Nov. 18th and 19th not one but two comets will fly by the planet Mercury.
Space Exploration
Nov 18, 2013
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