12 days to go for Messenger!

Posted by TATWORTH on Geeks with Blogs See other posts from Geeks with Blogs or by TATWORTH
Published on Sat, 05 Mar 2011 14:23:13 GMT Indexed on 2011/03/05 15:25 UTC
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In just over twelve days from now, the Messenger space probe will go into orbit around our innermost planet, Mercury. See http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/index.php for latest mission timings.

After 2405 days in space and 15+ circuits of the sun (see http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/whereis/index.php), it about to go into orbit around Mercury. It has flown by Earth, Venus and Mercury in order to change velocity sufficiently to be able to go into orbit without requiring a massive amount of propellant.

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