TMac3000
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Now they need one that looks like Tinkerbell:thumbup:
Updates MESSENGER Mission News
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orb
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MESSENGER Mission News
June 22, 2012
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/
MESSENGER Completes Its 1,000th Orbit of Mercury
MESSENGER will complete its 1,000th orbit of the planet closest to the Sun at 11:22 p.m. EDT tonight. "Reaching this milestone is yet another testimony to the hard work and dedication of the full MESSENGER team that has designed, launched, and operated this highly successful spacecraft," says the mission trajectory lead Jim McAdams of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.
The spacecraft was inserted into orbit around Mercury in mid-March 2011, after travelling more than 15 times around the Sun through the inner solar system and completing six planetary flybys. "Since arriving at Mercury, MESSENGER took a little more than 15 months to reach this mark," McAdams notes. "But because the orbital period has been reduced from just under 12 hours to 8 hours, it will take only 11 months to complete the next 1,000 orbits."
During its primary mission, which concluded on March 17, 2012, MESSENGER performed the first global reconnaissance of the geochemistry, geophysics, geologic history, atmosphere, magnetosphere, and plasma environment of Mercury. The spacecraft is now more than one-quarter of the way into a one-year extended mission that is building on this knowledge to address new questions raised by the initial orbital observations.
"Mercury is in a tough neighborhood, with high temperatures and increasingly frequent streams of solar energetic particles," says MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "It is therefore all the more remarkable that this spacecraft has met the challenge to perform as designed after 1,000 orbits about the innermost planet in our solar system. There is much more science ahead for this mission."
Paper on MESSENGER's Magnetosphere Garners Top Student Presentation Award
University of Michigan graduate student and MESSENGER team member Gina DiBraccio received an Outstanding Student Paper Award from the American Geophysical Union's Planetary Sciences Section for her presentation, "MESSENGER observations of magnetopause structure at Mercury," delivered at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco last December. The presentation explored the mechanism by which energy and momentum are transferred from the solar wind into Mercury's magnetosphere.
"The processes at the boundary to Mercury's magnetosphere, in particular magnetic reconnection, are similar to what has been found at Earth's magnetopause, except that Mercury experiences much shorter timescales and a higher frequency of events," explains DiBraccio. "This has led us to question what causes the difference in timescales and intensity of magnetopause magnetic reconnection at various planets. We find that the changes in plasma and magnetic pressures affect solar-planetary interaction throughout the heliosphere, as do the orientation and strength of the interplanetary magnetic field that drapes around the planetary magnetopause."
DiBraccio's interest in space science dates back to the third grade, when she declared that she wanted to be an astronaut. "After noticing my decision, my parents strongly supported and encouraged me," she says. "They would leave daily news clippings regarding NASA and new discoveries, take me to the local planetarium and observatories, and bring me to special events at museums, and they even bought me a telescope."
She attended the University of Pittsburgh, earning a dual B.S. degree in physics and astronomy, as well as a B.S. in business administration. She also worked as a co-op student at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, and then later at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
DiBraccio is now working on a Ph.D., and she plans to continue research with MESSENGER data. "There are many outstanding questions pertaining to planetary magnetospheres, and MESSENGER makes it possible to explore this exciting topic so we may compare our results to those at other planets with intrinsic magnetic fields," she says.
{...}
June 22, 2012
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/
MESSENGER Completes Its 1,000th Orbit of Mercury
MESSENGER will complete its 1,000th orbit of the planet closest to the Sun at 11:22 p.m. EDT tonight. "Reaching this milestone is yet another testimony to the hard work and dedication of the full MESSENGER team that has designed, launched, and operated this highly successful spacecraft," says the mission trajectory lead Jim McAdams of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.
The spacecraft was inserted into orbit around Mercury in mid-March 2011, after travelling more than 15 times around the Sun through the inner solar system and completing six planetary flybys. "Since arriving at Mercury, MESSENGER took a little more than 15 months to reach this mark," McAdams notes. "But because the orbital period has been reduced from just under 12 hours to 8 hours, it will take only 11 months to complete the next 1,000 orbits."
During its primary mission, which concluded on March 17, 2012, MESSENGER performed the first global reconnaissance of the geochemistry, geophysics, geologic history, atmosphere, magnetosphere, and plasma environment of Mercury. The spacecraft is now more than one-quarter of the way into a one-year extended mission that is building on this knowledge to address new questions raised by the initial orbital observations.
"Mercury is in a tough neighborhood, with high temperatures and increasingly frequent streams of solar energetic particles," says MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "It is therefore all the more remarkable that this spacecraft has met the challenge to perform as designed after 1,000 orbits about the innermost planet in our solar system. There is much more science ahead for this mission."
Paper on MESSENGER's Magnetosphere Garners Top Student Presentation Award
University of Michigan graduate student and MESSENGER team member Gina DiBraccio received an Outstanding Student Paper Award from the American Geophysical Union's Planetary Sciences Section for her presentation, "MESSENGER observations of magnetopause structure at Mercury," delivered at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco last December. The presentation explored the mechanism by which energy and momentum are transferred from the solar wind into Mercury's magnetosphere.
"The processes at the boundary to Mercury's magnetosphere, in particular magnetic reconnection, are similar to what has been found at Earth's magnetopause, except that Mercury experiences much shorter timescales and a higher frequency of events," explains DiBraccio. "This has led us to question what causes the difference in timescales and intensity of magnetopause magnetic reconnection at various planets. We find that the changes in plasma and magnetic pressures affect solar-planetary interaction throughout the heliosphere, as do the orientation and strength of the interplanetary magnetic field that drapes around the planetary magnetopause."
DiBraccio's interest in space science dates back to the third grade, when she declared that she wanted to be an astronaut. "After noticing my decision, my parents strongly supported and encouraged me," she says. "They would leave daily news clippings regarding NASA and new discoveries, take me to the local planetarium and observatories, and bring me to special events at museums, and they even bought me a telescope."
She attended the University of Pittsburgh, earning a dual B.S. degree in physics and astronomy, as well as a B.S. in business administration. She also worked as a co-op student at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, and then later at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
DiBraccio is now working on a Ph.D., and she plans to continue research with MESSENGER data. "There are many outstanding questions pertaining to planetary magnetospheres, and MESSENGER makes it possible to explore this exciting topic so we may compare our results to those at other planets with intrinsic magnetic fields," she says.
{...}
NukeET
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Here's to a thousand more!
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Universe Today: Postcards From The (Inner) Edge
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Notebook
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MESSENGER Mission News
August 3, 2012
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu
MESSENGER Marks 8th Anniversary of Launch
The MESSENGER spacecraft launched http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/movies/MESSENGERLaunch.mpg eight years ago today – on August 3, 2004 – embarking on a six-and-a-half year journey to become the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury. The spacecraft’s 4.9-billion mile (7.9-billion kilometer) cruise to history included 15 trips around the Sun, a flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus, and three flybys of Mercury.
more...http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=225
The reason for more is its a good article, and I can't figure out how to put all the url stuff and such. Well worth watching.
August 3, 2012
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu
MESSENGER Marks 8th Anniversary of Launch
The MESSENGER spacecraft launched http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/movies/MESSENGERLaunch.mpg eight years ago today – on August 3, 2004 – embarking on a six-and-a-half year journey to become the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury. The spacecraft’s 4.9-billion mile (7.9-billion kilometer) cruise to history included 15 trips around the Sun, a flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus, and three flybys of Mercury.
more...http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=225
The reason for more is its a good article, and I can't figure out how to put all the url stuff and such. Well worth watching.
Last edited:
TMac3000
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Or it could have just waited for a proper window and gotten there in about three and half months:blink:
Linguofreak
Well-known member
I doubt it.
The planetary-orbit-to-planetary-orbit Delta-V required for a Hohmann trajectory straight from Earth to Mercury is 13 km/s. This doesn't even include the launch Delta-V, which is going to be on the order of 8 km/s. So you're looking at about 20 km/s to get from Earth to Mercury (a bit less since you're probably going to combine launch and trans-mercury-insertion, and because the orbit at Mercury has a fairly high eccentricity).
sorindafabico
New member
Assuming a delta-v of 13 km/s and a propellant with specific impulse of 440s, the mass ratio would be 20.
MESSENGER has 485 kg (I'm assuming it's her dry mass), so, the full stack would have 9.7 metric tons with JUST THE FUEL FOR THE PROBE (I'm neglecting rocket systems and engines of the alternative design). It could be launched on a DeltaIV or Atlas V, but I have no ideia of the increasing costs and of the feasibility of this.
Notebook
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MESSENGER Mission News
August 9, 2012
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Astronomical Union Approves Names for Nine Mercury Craters
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) recently approved a proposal from the MESSENGER Science Team to assign names to nine impact craters on Mercury. The IAU has been the arbiter of planetary and satellite nomenclature since its inception in 1919. In keeping with the established naming theme for craters on Mercury, all of the newly designated features are named after famous deceased artists, musicians, or authors or other contributors to the humanities.
“All of the nine newly named craters are located in Mercury’s north polar region, and MESSENGER team members and collaborators who are researching this area contributed the proposed names,” explains Mercury Dual Imaging System Instrument Scientist Nancy Chabot, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “Mercury's north polar region is of high scientific interest because of the shadowed craters there that host radar-bright deposits that may consist of water ice. All of the nine newly named craters host such deposits.”
The newly named craters are:
· Egonu, for Uzo Egonu (1931-1996), a Nigerian-born painter who at 13 was sent to England to study art, first at a private school in Norfolk and later at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. Exile, alienation, and the pain of displaced peoples were recurrent themes in his work.
· Gaudí, after Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926), a Spanish architect whose work concentrated largely on the Catalan capital of Barcelona. He was very skilled with ceramics, stained glass, wrought-iron forging, and carpentry and integrated these crafts into his architecture.
· Kandinsky, for Wassily Kandisky (1866-1944), a Russian painter and art theorist credited with painting the first purely abstract works.
· Petronius, for Titus Petronius (c. AD 27-66), a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero. He is generally believed to be the author of the Satyricon, a satirical novel believed to have been written during the Neronian era.
· Prokofiev, for Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who is considered one of the major composers of the 20th century. His best-known works include the ballet Romeo and Juliet – from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken – and Peter and the Wolf.
· Tolkien, for John Ronald Reuel (J. R. R.) Tolkien (1892-1973), an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
· Tryggvadóttir, for Nina Tryggvadóttir (1913-1968), one of Iceland's most important abstract expressionist artists and one of very few Icelandic female artists of her generation. She primarily worked in painting, but she also created collages, stained glass work, and mosaics.
· Qiu Ying, for Shifu Qiu Ying (1494-1552), a Chinese painter who specialized in the gongbi brush technique, a careful realist method in Chinese painting. He is regarded as one of the Four Great Masters of the Ming Dynasty.
· Yoshikawa, for Eiji Yoshikawa (1892-1962), a Japanese historical novelist best known for his revisions of older classics including The Tale of the Heike, Tale of Genji, Outlaws of the Marsh, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
These nine newly named craters join 77 other craters named since the spacecraft’s first Mercury flyby in January 2008.
”These latest names for major craters on Mercury are important for two reasons,” adds MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “The first is that formal names make it easier to communicate scientific findings about specific regions and features. The second, equally important reason is that these designations expand the opportunities to recognize the contributions to the arts by the most creative individuals from many cultures and eras. The names of those individuals are now linked in perpetuity to the innermost planet.”
More information about the names of features on Mercury and the other objects in the Solar System can be found at the U.S. Geological Survey's Planetary Nomenclature Web site: http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/index.html.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) is a NASA-sponsored scientific investigation of the planet Mercury and the first space mission designed to orbit the planet closest to the Sun. The MESSENGER spacecraft launched on August 3, 2004, and entered orbit about Mercury on March 18, 2011 (UTC), to begin its primary mission – a yearlong study of its target planet. MESSENGER’s extended mission began on March 18, 2012. Dr. Sean C. Solomon, the Director of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, leads the mission as Principal Investigator. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory built and operates the MESSENGER spacecraft and manages this Discovery-class mission for NASA.
Nice to see Tolkien up there, and Prokoviev:
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_and_the_Wolf"]Peter and the Wolf - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 9, 2012
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Astronomical Union Approves Names for Nine Mercury Craters
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) recently approved a proposal from the MESSENGER Science Team to assign names to nine impact craters on Mercury. The IAU has been the arbiter of planetary and satellite nomenclature since its inception in 1919. In keeping with the established naming theme for craters on Mercury, all of the newly designated features are named after famous deceased artists, musicians, or authors or other contributors to the humanities.
“All of the nine newly named craters are located in Mercury’s north polar region, and MESSENGER team members and collaborators who are researching this area contributed the proposed names,” explains Mercury Dual Imaging System Instrument Scientist Nancy Chabot, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “Mercury's north polar region is of high scientific interest because of the shadowed craters there that host radar-bright deposits that may consist of water ice. All of the nine newly named craters host such deposits.”
The newly named craters are:
· Egonu, for Uzo Egonu (1931-1996), a Nigerian-born painter who at 13 was sent to England to study art, first at a private school in Norfolk and later at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. Exile, alienation, and the pain of displaced peoples were recurrent themes in his work.
· Gaudí, after Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926), a Spanish architect whose work concentrated largely on the Catalan capital of Barcelona. He was very skilled with ceramics, stained glass, wrought-iron forging, and carpentry and integrated these crafts into his architecture.
· Kandinsky, for Wassily Kandisky (1866-1944), a Russian painter and art theorist credited with painting the first purely abstract works.
· Petronius, for Titus Petronius (c. AD 27-66), a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero. He is generally believed to be the author of the Satyricon, a satirical novel believed to have been written during the Neronian era.
· Prokofiev, for Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who is considered one of the major composers of the 20th century. His best-known works include the ballet Romeo and Juliet – from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken – and Peter and the Wolf.
· Tolkien, for John Ronald Reuel (J. R. R.) Tolkien (1892-1973), an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
· Tryggvadóttir, for Nina Tryggvadóttir (1913-1968), one of Iceland's most important abstract expressionist artists and one of very few Icelandic female artists of her generation. She primarily worked in painting, but she also created collages, stained glass work, and mosaics.
· Qiu Ying, for Shifu Qiu Ying (1494-1552), a Chinese painter who specialized in the gongbi brush technique, a careful realist method in Chinese painting. He is regarded as one of the Four Great Masters of the Ming Dynasty.
· Yoshikawa, for Eiji Yoshikawa (1892-1962), a Japanese historical novelist best known for his revisions of older classics including The Tale of the Heike, Tale of Genji, Outlaws of the Marsh, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
These nine newly named craters join 77 other craters named since the spacecraft’s first Mercury flyby in January 2008.
”These latest names for major craters on Mercury are important for two reasons,” adds MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “The first is that formal names make it easier to communicate scientific findings about specific regions and features. The second, equally important reason is that these designations expand the opportunities to recognize the contributions to the arts by the most creative individuals from many cultures and eras. The names of those individuals are now linked in perpetuity to the innermost planet.”
More information about the names of features on Mercury and the other objects in the Solar System can be found at the U.S. Geological Survey's Planetary Nomenclature Web site: http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/index.html.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) is a NASA-sponsored scientific investigation of the planet Mercury and the first space mission designed to orbit the planet closest to the Sun. The MESSENGER spacecraft launched on August 3, 2004, and entered orbit about Mercury on March 18, 2011 (UTC), to begin its primary mission – a yearlong study of its target planet. MESSENGER’s extended mission began on March 18, 2012. Dr. Sean C. Solomon, the Director of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, leads the mission as Principal Investigator. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory built and operates the MESSENGER spacecraft and manages this Discovery-class mission for NASA.
Nice to see Tolkien up there, and Prokoviev:
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_and_the_Wolf"]Peter and the Wolf - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last edited:
Notebook
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As usual I can't figure out all the clever pictures, so more stuff here.
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/
Notebook
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MESSENGER’s X-Ray Spectrometer Reveals Chemical Diversity on Mercury's Surface
New data from the X-Ray Spectrometer (XRS) on the MESSENGER spacecraft — one of two instruments designed to measure the abundances of many key elements on Mercury — show variations in the composition of surface material on Mercury that point to changes over time in the characteristics of volcanic eruptions on the solar system’s innermost planet.
In results to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, scientists report that Mercury’s volcanic smooth plains units differ in composition from older surrounding terrains. The older terrain has higher ratios of magnesium to silicon, sulfur to silicon, and calcium to silicon, but lower ratios of aluminum to silicon, suggesting that the smooth plains material erupted from a magma source that was chemically different from the source of the material in the older regions, explains Shoshana Weider of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the lead author on the paper.
“The new findings further illuminate the geological history of the planet,” she says. “We now know that these areas are compositionally distinct, indicating that different parts of Mercury’s mantle melted at different times and temperatures, and through volcanic activity created the materials in the different terrains.”
Weider and her co-authors also report that Mercury’s surface is dominated by minerals high in magnesium and enriched in sulfur.
“None of the other terrestrial planets have such high levels of sulfur. We are seeing about ten times the amount of sulfur than on Earth and Mars,” Weider says. “In terms of magnesium, we do have some materials on Earth that are high in magnesium. They tend to be ancient volcanic rocks that formed from very hot lavas. So this composition on Mercury tells us that eruptions of high-temperature lavas might have formed these high-magnesium materials.”
These findings stem from the team’s analysis of 205 X-ray measurements of Mercury’s surface, focusing on the large expanse of smooth volcanic plains at high northern latitudes and surrounding areas that are higher in crater density and therefore older than the northern plains. Weider says the measurements support what other MESSENGER scientists have observed from the mission’s images. “Now we can correlate their findings with our data, providing increased confidence in what we are discovering about the planet,” she says.
MESSENGER has been orbiting Mercury since March 2011, and has been revealing new information about the surface chemistry and geological history of the innermost planet in the solar system. The XRS measures elemental abundances on the surface of Mercury by detecting fluorescent X-ray emissions induced on the planet's surface by the incident solar X-ray flux. The instrument began orbital observations on March 23, 2011, and has observed X-ray fluorescence from the surface of the planet whenever a sunlit portion of Mercury has been within the XRS field of view.
“The X-ray spectrometer focuses on the estimation of elemental abundances on Mercury; i.e., the amount of magnesium, aluminum, sulfur, calcium, and iron in surface material,” Weider says. “From there we can start to work out what kinds of minerals are present, then the types of rocks that were formed, and then we can start to unravel the geological history.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) is a NASA-sponsored scientific investigation of the planet Mercury and the first space mission designed to orbit the planet closest to the Sun. The MESSENGER spacecraft launched on August 3, 2004, and entered orbit about Mercury on March 18, 2011 (UTC), to begin its primary mission – a yearlong study of its target planet. MESSENGER’s extended mission began on March 18, 2012. Dr. Sean C. Solomon, the Director of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, leads the mission as Principal Investigator. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory built and operates the MESSENGER spacecraft and manages this Discovery-class mission for NASA.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No clever pictures this time so....
N.
New data from the X-Ray Spectrometer (XRS) on the MESSENGER spacecraft — one of two instruments designed to measure the abundances of many key elements on Mercury — show variations in the composition of surface material on Mercury that point to changes over time in the characteristics of volcanic eruptions on the solar system’s innermost planet.
In results to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, scientists report that Mercury’s volcanic smooth plains units differ in composition from older surrounding terrains. The older terrain has higher ratios of magnesium to silicon, sulfur to silicon, and calcium to silicon, but lower ratios of aluminum to silicon, suggesting that the smooth plains material erupted from a magma source that was chemically different from the source of the material in the older regions, explains Shoshana Weider of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, the lead author on the paper.
“The new findings further illuminate the geological history of the planet,” she says. “We now know that these areas are compositionally distinct, indicating that different parts of Mercury’s mantle melted at different times and temperatures, and through volcanic activity created the materials in the different terrains.”
Weider and her co-authors also report that Mercury’s surface is dominated by minerals high in magnesium and enriched in sulfur.
“None of the other terrestrial planets have such high levels of sulfur. We are seeing about ten times the amount of sulfur than on Earth and Mars,” Weider says. “In terms of magnesium, we do have some materials on Earth that are high in magnesium. They tend to be ancient volcanic rocks that formed from very hot lavas. So this composition on Mercury tells us that eruptions of high-temperature lavas might have formed these high-magnesium materials.”
These findings stem from the team’s analysis of 205 X-ray measurements of Mercury’s surface, focusing on the large expanse of smooth volcanic plains at high northern latitudes and surrounding areas that are higher in crater density and therefore older than the northern plains. Weider says the measurements support what other MESSENGER scientists have observed from the mission’s images. “Now we can correlate their findings with our data, providing increased confidence in what we are discovering about the planet,” she says.
MESSENGER has been orbiting Mercury since March 2011, and has been revealing new information about the surface chemistry and geological history of the innermost planet in the solar system. The XRS measures elemental abundances on the surface of Mercury by detecting fluorescent X-ray emissions induced on the planet's surface by the incident solar X-ray flux. The instrument began orbital observations on March 23, 2011, and has observed X-ray fluorescence from the surface of the planet whenever a sunlit portion of Mercury has been within the XRS field of view.
“The X-ray spectrometer focuses on the estimation of elemental abundances on Mercury; i.e., the amount of magnesium, aluminum, sulfur, calcium, and iron in surface material,” Weider says. “From there we can start to work out what kinds of minerals are present, then the types of rocks that were formed, and then we can start to unravel the geological history.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) is a NASA-sponsored scientific investigation of the planet Mercury and the first space mission designed to orbit the planet closest to the Sun. The MESSENGER spacecraft launched on August 3, 2004, and entered orbit about Mercury on March 18, 2011 (UTC), to begin its primary mission – a yearlong study of its target planet. MESSENGER’s extended mission began on March 18, 2012. Dr. Sean C. Solomon, the Director of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, leads the mission as Principal Investigator. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory built and operates the MESSENGER spacecraft and manages this Discovery-class mission for NASA.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No clever pictures this time so....
N.
orb
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SPACE.com: Mercury's Surface Resembles Rare Meteorites
SiberianTiger
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Can't wait till the deposits of gold and radioactive isotopes are finally revealed. 
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SPACE.com: Messenger: New Views of Mercury
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Universe Today: Mercury’s Surface is Full of Sulfur
The southern portion of Mercury’s Vivaldi basin and outlying rugged terrain
The southern portion of Mercury’s Vivaldi basin and outlying rugged terrain
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JHU APL:
MESSENGER Mission News
October 4, 2012
MESSENGER Mission Receives the IAA Laurels for Team Achievement Award
The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) has awarded the 2012 Laurels for Team Achievement Award to the MESSENGER team. The award was presented September 30 at the opening ceremony of the 63rd International Astronautical Congress, which is being held this week in Naples.
MESSENGER Project Scientist Ralph McNutt, MESSENGER Co-investigator Stamatios Krimigis, and MESSENGER Mission Design Lead Engineer James McAdams were on hand to accept the award before an audience of 300, including 14 heads of space agencies. In introductory remarks, Yannick d'Escatha, director of the French Space Agency, vice president of IAA and chair of the awards committee, called the MESSENGER mission a "fantastic and extraordinary accomplishment."
The citation for MESSENGER's award reads: "To the team of scientists and engineers whose creativity and expertise made possible the development and operation of the MESSENGER Mission, the first to orbit Mercury, as a breakthrough in scientific solar system exploration. During its unprecedented one-year primary mission, this robotic explorer has provided an extraordinary, comprehensive scientific overview of the planet, its makeup, its exosphere and its magnetosphere, providing the text for a new and overdue chapter of humankind's knowledge of the smallest of the terrestrial planets. This unique achievement of technology was conducted by the JHU APL and accomplished with the collaboration of NASA."
John Sommerer, the head of the Space Department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which built and operates the spacecraft, said: "APL is very pleased with this international recognition. To have accomplished such a complete characterization of this little-known planet, within the low-cost Discovery mission class, is a testament to the vision and skill of the science, engineering, and operations team responsible for MESSENGER."
The Laurels Team Achievement Award is one of the two major awards given by IAA every year, the other for individual recipients. The team award was established in 2001 to recognize extraordinary performance and achievement by a team of scientists, engineers, and managers in the field of astronautics. Past recipients of the award have gone to the teams of the Cassini-Huygens Program (2006), the Hubble Space Telescope (2004) and the U.S. Space Shuttle (2002).
"This is a special honor for MESSENGER, when one knows that previous winners include Hubble, Cassini, SOHO, and the U.S. Space Shuttle Team, among others," said Krimigis of APL. "We are in select company, indeed."
"From the outset of this mission, MESSENGER has been a team effort. Our scientists, engineers, managers, and operations staff have worked in close cooperation for more than 12 years to maximize the effectiveness and impact of this hardy and well-traveled spacecraft," says MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "It is appropriate that this honor be shared across the entire mission team, and all team members share my gratitude that the International Academy of Astronautics has seen fit to acknowledge the accomplishments of the MESSENGER mission with this wonderful award."
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MESSENGER Mission News
October 4, 2012
MESSENGER Mission Receives the IAA Laurels for Team Achievement Award
The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) has awarded the 2012 Laurels for Team Achievement Award to the MESSENGER team. The award was presented September 30 at the opening ceremony of the 63rd International Astronautical Congress, which is being held this week in Naples.
MESSENGER Project Scientist Ralph McNutt, MESSENGER Co-investigator Stamatios Krimigis, and MESSENGER Mission Design Lead Engineer James McAdams were on hand to accept the award before an audience of 300, including 14 heads of space agencies. In introductory remarks, Yannick d'Escatha, director of the French Space Agency, vice president of IAA and chair of the awards committee, called the MESSENGER mission a "fantastic and extraordinary accomplishment."
The citation for MESSENGER's award reads: "To the team of scientists and engineers whose creativity and expertise made possible the development and operation of the MESSENGER Mission, the first to orbit Mercury, as a breakthrough in scientific solar system exploration. During its unprecedented one-year primary mission, this robotic explorer has provided an extraordinary, comprehensive scientific overview of the planet, its makeup, its exosphere and its magnetosphere, providing the text for a new and overdue chapter of humankind's knowledge of the smallest of the terrestrial planets. This unique achievement of technology was conducted by the JHU APL and accomplished with the collaboration of NASA."
John Sommerer, the head of the Space Department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which built and operates the spacecraft, said: "APL is very pleased with this international recognition. To have accomplished such a complete characterization of this little-known planet, within the low-cost Discovery mission class, is a testament to the vision and skill of the science, engineering, and operations team responsible for MESSENGER."
The Laurels Team Achievement Award is one of the two major awards given by IAA every year, the other for individual recipients. The team award was established in 2001 to recognize extraordinary performance and achievement by a team of scientists, engineers, and managers in the field of astronautics. Past recipients of the award have gone to the teams of the Cassini-Huygens Program (2006), the Hubble Space Telescope (2004) and the U.S. Space Shuttle (2002).
"This is a special honor for MESSENGER, when one knows that previous winners include Hubble, Cassini, SOHO, and the U.S. Space Shuttle Team, among others," said Krimigis of APL. "We are in select company, indeed."
"From the outset of this mission, MESSENGER has been a team effort. Our scientists, engineers, managers, and operations staff have worked in close cooperation for more than 12 years to maximize the effectiveness and impact of this hardy and well-traveled spacecraft," says MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "It is appropriate that this honor be shared across the entire mission team, and all team members share my gratitude that the International Academy of Astronautics has seen fit to acknowledge the accomplishments of the MESSENGER mission with this wonderful award."
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JHU APL:
MESSENGER Mission News
November 15, 2012
MESSENGER Finds Unusual Groups of Ridges and Troughs on Mercury
MESSENGER has discovered assemblages of tectonic landforms unlike any previously found on Mercury or elsewhere in the Solar System. The findings are reported in a paper led by Smithsonian scientist Thomas Watters, "Extension and contraction within volcanically buried impact craters and basins on Mercury," published in the December issue of the journal Geology and available online at http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/40/12/1123.full.
The surface of Mercury is covered with deformational landforms that formed by faulting in response to horizontal contraction or shortening as the planet's interior cooled and surface area shrank, causing blocks of crustal material to be pushed together. Contraction from cooling of Mercury's interior has been so dominant that extensional landforms caused by fault formation in response to horizontal stretching and pulling apart of crustal material had not been previously documented outside of the interiors of a few large impact basins.
The MESSENGER spacecraft, in orbit around Mercury since March of last year, has revealed families of extensional troughs, or graben, that are encircled by contractional wrinkle ridges arranged in circular rings. The troughs can form complex patterns varying from the outlines of polygons inside the ridge rings to arcs that parallel the bounding ridges.
"The pattern of winkle ridges and graben resembles the raised edge and cracks in a pie crust," said Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum. The "pie crust" analogy also fits another notable aspect of these collections of tectonic landforms – their association with "ghost" craters. Ghost craters are impact craters that have been flooded and buried by lava flows. The thin volcanic deposits overlying the rim of a fully buried impact crater serve to concentrate contractional forces, leading to the formation of a ridge ring that reveals the outline of the buried crater.
"The special arrangement of the wrinkle ridges and graben in many of the ghost craters on Mercury is due to a combination of extensional forces from cooling and contraction of unusually thick lava flow units and contractional forces from cooling and contraction of the planet's interior," says Sean Solomon of the Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, coauthor and principal investigator of the MESSENGER mission. The eruption and rapid accumulation of very fluid lava flows into thick cooling units on a planet undergoing a high rate of global contraction may be why these systems of tectonic landforms in ghost craters on Mercury have not been seen elsewhere in the Solar System.
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NewScientist: Pumpkin pie craters on Mercury are solar system first
MESSENGER Mission News
November 15, 2012
MESSENGER Finds Unusual Groups of Ridges and Troughs on Mercury
MESSENGER has discovered assemblages of tectonic landforms unlike any previously found on Mercury or elsewhere in the Solar System. The findings are reported in a paper led by Smithsonian scientist Thomas Watters, "Extension and contraction within volcanically buried impact craters and basins on Mercury," published in the December issue of the journal Geology and available online at http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/40/12/1123.full.
The surface of Mercury is covered with deformational landforms that formed by faulting in response to horizontal contraction or shortening as the planet's interior cooled and surface area shrank, causing blocks of crustal material to be pushed together. Contraction from cooling of Mercury's interior has been so dominant that extensional landforms caused by fault formation in response to horizontal stretching and pulling apart of crustal material had not been previously documented outside of the interiors of a few large impact basins.
The MESSENGER spacecraft, in orbit around Mercury since March of last year, has revealed families of extensional troughs, or graben, that are encircled by contractional wrinkle ridges arranged in circular rings. The troughs can form complex patterns varying from the outlines of polygons inside the ridge rings to arcs that parallel the bounding ridges.
"The pattern of winkle ridges and graben resembles the raised edge and cracks in a pie crust," said Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum. The "pie crust" analogy also fits another notable aspect of these collections of tectonic landforms – their association with "ghost" craters. Ghost craters are impact craters that have been flooded and buried by lava flows. The thin volcanic deposits overlying the rim of a fully buried impact crater serve to concentrate contractional forces, leading to the formation of a ridge ring that reveals the outline of the buried crater.
"The special arrangement of the wrinkle ridges and graben in many of the ghost craters on Mercury is due to a combination of extensional forces from cooling and contraction of unusually thick lava flow units and contractional forces from cooling and contraction of the planet's interior," says Sean Solomon of the Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, coauthor and principal investigator of the MESSENGER mission. The eruption and rapid accumulation of very fluid lava flows into thick cooling units on a planet undergoing a high rate of global contraction may be why these systems of tectonic landforms in ghost craters on Mercury have not been seen elsewhere in the Solar System.
{...}
NewScientist: Pumpkin pie craters on Mercury are solar system first
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NASA News Release:
MEDIA ADVISORY : M12-219
NASA Hosts Nov. 29 News Conference About Mercury Polar Regions
Nov. 26, 2012
WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Nov, 29, to reveal new observations from the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury. The briefing will be held in the NASA Headquarters auditorium, located at 300 E St. SW in Washington.
Science Journal has embargoed details until 2 p.m. on Nov. 29. The news conference will be carried live on NASA Television and the agency's website.
NASA's Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging, or MESSENGER spacecraft has been studying Mercury in unprecedented detail since its historic arrival there in March 2011.
The news conference participants are:
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MEDIA ADVISORY : M12-219
NASA Hosts Nov. 29 News Conference About Mercury Polar Regions
Nov. 26, 2012
WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Nov, 29, to reveal new observations from the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury. The briefing will be held in the NASA Headquarters auditorium, located at 300 E St. SW in Washington.
Science Journal has embargoed details until 2 p.m. on Nov. 29. The news conference will be carried live on NASA Television and the agency's website.
NASA's Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging, or MESSENGER spacecraft has been studying Mercury in unprecedented detail since its historic arrival there in March 2011.
The news conference participants are:
- Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington
- Sean Solomon, MESSENGER Principal Investigator, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, N.Y.
- David Lawrence, MESSENGER Participating Scientist, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.
- Gregory Neumann, Mercury Laser Altimeter Instrument Scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
- David Paige, MESSENGER Participating Scientist, University of California, Los Angeles
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