Crashing and Burning (Into Mercury)
May 1, 2015
There’s a new crater on Mercury. Yesterday, the MESSENGER space probe crashed into the surface of the closest planet to the sun. It was a planned crash, as the spacecraft had spent all of its fuel.
MESSENGER (Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging) was a probe sent to study the planet Mercury. The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched the probe in 2004. On its way to Mercury, the probe flew past Venus in 2007. During this flyby, MESSENGER worked with the European Space Agency (ESA) probe Venus Express to detail Venus’s surface. In 2008, the craft flew by Mercury twice and photographed areas of its surface that had never been seen by a spacecraft. MESSENGER flew by Mercury again in 2009. It took this long, complex route in order to enter into orbit around Mercury using minimal fuel, which it accomplished in March 2011. The probe mapped Mercury’s surface and studied its composition, interior structure, and magnetic field for four years.
MESSENGER made many important discoveries about Mercury. It showed that the planet has shrunk slightly since its formation. It also found that volcanic forces played a major part in the formation of Mercury’s surface. Finally, MESSENGER discovered small regions of ice at permanently shaded craters near the planet’s poles.
Despite MESSENGER’s fuel-saving maneuvers, the sun’s closeness posed challenges for the probe. The sun has an incredible amount of mass and thus a powerful gravitational pull. The sun’s gravity disrupted MESSENGER’s orbit, forcing the craft to fire its engines occasionally to keep from being pulled into Mercury. The probe ran out of fuel earlier this month and crashed into Mercury yesterday at 8,750 miles (14,000 kilometers) per hour. The crash made a crater some 50 feet (15 meters) in diameter. Talk about going out with a bang!
Other World Book articles
- Rediscovering Mercury
- Space exploration (2004-a Back in time article)
- Space exploration (2011-a Back in Time article)
- Space exploration