NASA - MESSENGER Poised for Mercury Orbit Insertion

NASA - MESSENGER Poised for Mercury Orbit Insertion

www.nasa.gov

After more than a dozen laps through the inner solar system, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft will move into orbit around Mercury on March 17, 2011. The durable spacecraft--carrying seven science instruments and fortified against the blistering environs near the sun--will be the first to orbit the innermost planet.

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MESSENGER has been on a six-year mission to become the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury. The spacecraft followed a path through the inner solar system, including one flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus, and three flybys of Mercury. This impressive journey is returning the firs

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NICE.. first orbit around Mecury. TONIGHT. Keep your eyes posted to the news and news links for updates. I love that we are still interested in learning more and more about our planetary neighbors. We should be investigating everything in our cosmic neighborhood that we can reach. It sucks that the moon mission got cancelled, but we do need to send MAN to step foot on other terrestrial bodies. It's TIME. (Breathable Air, Water, Temp, are all engineering problems that our greatest minds can solve, if we give them the chance.)

Question: Do you think we will find anything interesting there? Anything on the surface that may stand out? Anything extraterrestrial?

www.nasa.gov
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by uSNUUZuLUUz


More information:

messenger.jhuapl.edu...

messenger.jhuapl.edu...

reply to post by uSNUUZuLUUz


Also really cool, is that the Messenger Spacecraft, took some images of our Solar System from the INSIDE OUT.

www.nasa.gov...

comprised of 34 images and includes what some of our planets look like from Mercury's perspective!! really cool, check it out.

Oh boy! I can't wait for NASA to show us all that unedited data and photos from the surface of Mercury! NASA will surely show us any and all ruins or structures or any anomaly they capture, this will be exciting!

/end sarcasm

reply to post by uSNUUZuLUUz

Anything on the surface that may stand out? Anything extraterrestrial?

I would not hold my breath.
Mercury surface

reply to post by uSNUUZuLUUz


I am always fascinated by new explorations in our near by space. There is just something which automaticaly inspires awe, about the idea that something built by hands of mortals can be cast unto the heavens to do mans bidding , well out of his physical reach.
Regarding the likelihood of some drastic discovery of extra terrestrial life on Mercury, I have to be blunt about this, I hold very little hope or expectation of any such thing coming to pass. For one thing, although its true that here on Earth we are finding new extremophile lifeforms every so often, which defy our thinking about how life forms very often, where Mercury is concerned I just feel that would be too much of a stretch.
Although its possible of course, since the solar winds there are deflected by a magnetosphere , similar to our own here on Earth, but the magnetosphere does something with regularity on Mercury , that it does NOT do here on Earth.
Mercury has a leaky magnetic field, in that rather than covering the whole planet evenly and strongly, the magnetic field of Mercury can be whipped up into a vortex, creating an opening in the magnetosphere which allows access to the surface of Mercury by the solar wind. Similar tornadoes of magnetism happen here on Earth as well, but the chances of a " magnetic reconnection" happening here are ten or so times less likely than they are to occur on Mercury.
With magnetic flux occuring and solar wind pounding through it to radiate the surface of the planet, it is highly unlikely that any life of note could reside there.
Further to that, there is the relatively thin atmosphere. In actual fact calling it an atmosphere is somewhat overstating the issue, because Mercury has more of a thin shroud , only loosely bonded to its surface. In fact some say that the only reason it appears to have anything of an exosphere at all, is that comets bash gases out of the surface, and the solar wind deposits helium and hydrogen as it blows past, funneling down those fluxing tubes of magnetic energy I refered to earlier.
Based on all this , I would say that in my opinion (although I could be wrong) there is little to no hope of finding anything staggering on Mercury, apart of course, from all the amazing things humanity usualy plunders from its neighbors. Dirt samples, "atmospheric readings" , and seismic data, as well as all those stunning photographs.

Originally posted by derpif
reply to post by uSNUUZuLUUz

 

Anything on the surface that may stand out? Anything extraterrestrial?

I would not hold my breath.
Mercury surface

Actually I would hold my breath

Originally posted by sevensheeps

Originally posted by derpif
reply to post by uSNUUZuLUUz

 

Anything on the surface that may stand out? Anything extraterrestrial?

I would not hold my breath.
Mercury surface

Actually I would hold my breath

i cannot imagine mercury inhabitants any different...

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