18 March 2011: The NASA MESSENGER spacecraft achieved orbit around mercury EDT successfully at about 9 am on Thursday, 17 March. This is the first time a spacecraft of this engineering and scientific milestone in the innermost planet of our solar system has reached.
"This mission will continue to revolutionize our understanding of mercury in the coming year," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who received mission control at the Johns Hopkins University applied physics laboratory in Laurel, MD., was on MESSENGER as engineers confirm telemetry data insert orbit. "NASA is science textbooks rewrite." "Messenger is a good example of this, our scientists are the envelope of human knowledge innovation to push you."
At 9:10 am EDT, engineers, received the expected radiation-based signals of nominal burn shutdown operations center and confirmed successful insertion of the MESSENGER spacecraft in orbit around the planet Mercury. NASA's MErcury surface, space environment, geochemistry, and ranging or MESSENGER, turned back to the Earth at 9:45 am EDT, and began to send data. After checking the data confirmed that clean burn reporting one engineering and operations teams burning nominally with all subsystems and no logged errors running.
MESSENGER's main thruster fired for about 15 minutes at 8:45 am, slow down easing the probe of 1,929 miles per hour and it into the planned orbit of mercury. The rendezvous was about 96 million km from Earth.
"Mercury orbit reached by far the biggest milestone was since MESSENGER before, more than six and a half years", said Peter Bedini, MESSENGER project manager of applied physics laboratory (APL). "This achievement is the result an enormous amount of work by the navigation, guidance and control and mission operations team, which led the ship through its 4.9 billion mile journey."
For the next few weeks, APL be engineers to ensure, that the systems are the probe all good in Mercury's environment rough thermal concentrated. As of March 2005, the instruments are turned on and checked out, and on 4 April, primary science phase will start the mission.
"Despite the proximity to the Earth, the planet Mercury relatively unexplored, for decades", said Sean Solomon, MESSENGER principal investigator of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "For the first time in history is a scientific Observatory in orbit to the innermost planet of our solar system." "Mercury secrets and the impact that they consider the origin and development of Earth-like planet, to be revealed."
APL was designed and built by the probe. The laboratory manages and operates the Mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
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