** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **

Glaucus

Glaucus

Glaucus

Man of Honour
Joined
11 Mar 2004
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76,634
Well messenger is dead.
A NASA planetary exploration mission came to a planned, but nonetheless dramatic, end Thursday when it slammed into Mercury’s surface at about 8,750 mph and created a new crater on the planet’s surface.


Mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, have confirmed NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft impacted the surface of Mercury, as anticipated, at 3:26 p.m. EDT.


Mission control confirmed end of operations just a few minutes later, at 3:40 p.m., when no signal was detected by NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) station in Goldstone, California, at the time the spacecraft would have emerged from behind the planet. This conclusion was independently confirmed by the DSN’s Radio Science team, which also was monitoring for a signal from MESSENGER.


“Going out with a bang as it impacts the surface of Mercury, we are celebrating MESSENGER as more than a successful mission,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The MESSENGER mission will continue to provide scientists with a bonanza of new results as we begin the next phase of this mission--analyzing the exciting data already in the archives, and unravelling the mysteries of Mercury.”


Prior to impact, MESSENGER’s mission design team predicted the spacecraft would pass a few miles over a lava-filled basin on the planet before striking the surface and creating a crater estimated to be as wide as 50 feet.


MESSENGER’s lonely demise on the small, scorched planet closest to the sun went unobserved because the probe hit the side of the planet facing away from Earth, so ground-based telescopes were not able to capture the moment of impact. Space-based telescopes also were unable to view the impact, as Mercury’s proximity to the sun would damage optics.
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Glaucus

Glaucus

Glaucus

Man of Honour
Joined
11 Mar 2004
Posts
76,634
Live team on nasa TV starts at 13:35
SpaceX webcast starts at 14:00

It's always the same I find it odd program always starts earlier on nasa TV than spaceX own webcast.
 

Glaucus

Glaucus

Glaucus

Man of Honour
Joined
11 Mar 2004
Posts
76,634
SpaceX have just said

Had humans been on board today, they would have been in great shape
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Great stuff, wonder what the data will say in coming weeks and if any modifications need making, hopefully not and we'll get in flight abort sooner rather than later.
 
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