One Step Closer To Mysterious Mercury
History was made on Thursday, March 17, 2011, when NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), the US government’s space exploration program successfully launched its “Messenger” spacecraft into Mercury’s orbit. Until now, spacecrafts had only been able to ‘fly by’ and capture quick photos of the mysterious sizzling planet which lies closest to the sun.
The day marked the conclusion of six years of hard work by NASA and a 4.9 billion mile (eight billion kilometer) journey by Messenger. Thanks to some very complicated calculations, the NASA team was able to create the perfect gravitational pull from three different planets to insert the spacecraft into Mercury’s orbit.
Messenger, which stands for Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging, contains sophisticated cameras and tools that will map almost every inch of the planet in extreme detail for at least a year or longer, depending on how long its instruments continue to work.
Not An Ordinary Day
Mercury is a small planet, about twice as big in diameter as our moon, and is three times closer to the sun as Earth. Its day temperature ranges around 840°F (450°C), while its night temperature plummets to -346°F (-210°C)!
Being the closest to the sun, it takes Mercury only 88 days to rotate around the sun, but it does so extremely slowly making its days 59 times longer than those on Earth. Put all that together, and a Mercurian day lasts about three-quarters of the Mercurian year!
Messenger will help astronomers find out things like why Mercury’s surface, which is mostly made of iron, is so much denser than Earth, Venus and Mars, and how that surface came to be. They also hope to discover whether the craters located at Mercury's poles and shielded from the sun actually contain ice, or something else. Finally, they hope to determine what causes Mercury to have a strong magnetic field.
Hopefully, mankind is now one giant step closer to solving the Mercurian mystery.
This is a very cool article.
venus is the hottest planet even though it is not the closest… interesting…
I`m surprised Mercury isn`t burned by the sun. It must be powerful or something.
mercury looks like amoon
Mercury is quite a fascinating planet.
the temp. changed so much
mercury is so hot
i don't like mercury it's too hot like the sun
That's so cool. Mercury is like my 4th favorite planet! Although, I'd hate to live there...
i like mercury it is my 3rd favorite planet
Mercury is the closest planet to the sun so therefore it is the hottest planet in the solar system.
In 2015 we I mean NASA will make a trip to Pluto the dwarf planet there are other dwarf planets like planet X and sydneya.
What about that new planet, Tyche? I wonder if they will ever send a craft there.
Yeah i was just thinking about that.
It is super cool that in we finally get to discover mercury, we learned about it yesterday in class.
how amazing
i did not know it was 3 times bigger than the moon in width but if we run out of metal or iron on earth we can take chunks of iron from mercury
I did not know that mercury looked like that it looks like the moon almost.
Is Messenger going to land on the surface of the planet itself? If so, what protection will it have to shield it from the burning heat and the freezing cold?
Does Mercury take 88 Earth or Mercurian days to rotate around the Sun?
88 Earth Days.
Wow! Mercury is certainly a very interesting planet. Look at the climatic fluctuations. I hope they are really able to solve this Mercurian Mystery.
that is very exciting that we are discovering so much about space.
That was a amazing article and sending a messenger to Mecury is awesome even we cant land people on mercury it is still awesome, and it might be one step closer to landing on mars.