What type of rocket launched messenger to mercury

By April 20, , with the help of three engine firings, the orbital period was reduced to eight hours. By this time, the imaging instrument had globally mapped both in high-resolution monochrome and in color, the entire surface of the planet.

On Feb. By Sept. Mission controllers implemented at least two orbital maneuvers Sept. On Jan. On April 16, , NASA announced that the spacecraft would impact the surface of Mercury by April 30, , after it ran out of propellant. Impact coordinates were probably close to Siddiqi, Asif A. The next full Moon is the Beaver Moon, and there will be a near-total lunar eclipse.

Full Moon Guide: November - December JPL's lucky peanuts are an unofficial tradition at big mission events. Full Moon Guide: October - November It's suspected that about 5, years ago a comet swept within 23 million miles of the Sun, closer than the innermost planet Mercury.

Full Moon Guide: August - September BepiColombo will bring flagship-class science to Mercury to answer questions both old and new. It comprises two science spacecraft. The two will always be in the same orbit plane, making it easy to do simultaneous observations of the behavior of the magnetic field and particles in different locations near Mercury.

MPO has cameras and spectrometers to take photos and compositional measurements of the surface. Messenger hinted at small-scale faults on which shrinking could be occurring today; MPO will try to determine if the innermost planet is still active.

A spacecraft has to shed a huge quantity of angular momentum to get close to the Sun and settle into orbit around the small planet.

MTM will use solar-electric propulsion, its huge solar panels powering ion thrusters that will continuously fire for most of the journey. Shortly before arriving at Mercury, BepiColombo will drop the MTM, thus avoiding the requirement of slowing down into Mercury orbit with all that extra mass. Mercury Orbit Insertion in December should be a piece of cake by comparison. Until then, enjoy this replay of the launch which starts 38 minutes into the clip! Nice article! But I do have a question: The image of Mercury near the top has a caption saying it was photographed by Messenger in , but the article says Messenger "accomplished its orbital mission from to ".

I know it traveled a complex path getting there, was the image acquired somewhere along the way, before orbiting Mercury? Thanks, BobW. Log in to Reply. Good eye. The custom-developed panels were two-thirds mirrors called optical solar reflectors and one-third triple-junction solar cells, which converted 28 percent of the sunlight hitting them into electricity.

Helium pressurized the system and pushed the fuel and oxidizer through to the engines. At launch the spacecraft carried just under kilograms about 1, pounds of propellant, and it used nearly 30 percent of it during the maneuver that inserted the spacecraft into orbit about Mercury. The small hydrazine thrusters played several important roles: four newton 5-pound thrusters were used for small course corrections and helped steady MESSENGER during large engine burns. The dozen 4.

The circularly polarized phased arrays — developed by APL and located with the fanbeam antennas on the front and back of the spacecraft — were the main link for sending science data to Earth.

High-gain antennas sent radio signals through a narrower, more concentrated beam than low-gain antennas and were used primarily to send larger amounts of data over the same distance as a low-gain antenna.

Transmission rates varied according to spacecraft distance and ground-station antenna size. The spacecraft carried a pair of identical IEMs for backup purposes; both housed a megahertz MHz main processor and MHz fault protection processor.

All four were radiation-hardened RAD processors, based on predecessors of the PowerPC chip found in some models of home computers. The main processor ran the Command and Data Handling software for data transfer and file storage, as well as the Guidance and Control software used to navigate and point the spacecraft. The main processor selected the files with highest priority to transmit to Earth, or mission operators could download data files in any order the team chose.

Antenna signal strength and downlink rate varied with spacecraft-Earth distance and ground-station antenna size. The Guidance and Control software also automatically rotated the spacecraft and solar panels to the desired Sun-relative orientation, ensuring that the panels produced sufficient power while maintaining safe temperatures.

The instruments are labeled in the picture below. The process of selecting the scientific instrumentation for a mission is typically a balance between answering as many science questions as possible and fitting within the available mission resources for mass, power, mechanical accommodation, schedule, and cost.

Payload mass was limited to 50 kilograms pounds because of the propellant mass needed for orbit insertion. The instrument mechanical accommodation was difficult because of the unique thermal constraints faced during the mission; instruments had to be mounted where Mercury would be in view but the Sun would not, and they had to be maintained within an acceptable temperature range in a very harsh environment. In each case the mass included mounting hardware and thermal control component and power was the nominal average power consumption per orbit; actual values vared with instrument operational mode.

Mass: 8. This instrument consisted of two cameras that mapped landforms, tracked variations in surface spectra and gathered topographic information.

The imager pivoted, giving it the ability to capture images from a wide area without having to re-point the spacecraft and allowed it to follow the stars and other optical navigation guides. The wide-angle camera had a The narrow-angle camera could take black-and-white images at high resolution through its 1.

A range of imaging campaigns achieves a balance between globally mapping the entire surface of Mercury and obtaining targeted higher-resolution images in support of specific science goals. Together, MDIS's imaging campaigns will provide a new view of Mercury and will address one of the mission's main science questions: What is the geologic history of Mercury? Figure 1. A portion of the surface morphology base map. The mosaic is centered at The large crater in the center is Valmiki km diameter.

Inset globe: example of planned base map image coverage during a typical week, showing how mosaics of large regions of the surface are built up from numerous individual images. During the first days of the orbital mission, equal to one solar day on Mercury, MDIS will acquire images to produce a high-resolution base map for surface morphology morphology is the term given to the shape and texture of the surface.

At this resolution, features about 1 km in horizontal scale are recognizable in the images. Images acquired for the surface morphology base map have off-vertical solar illumination and visible shadows so as to reveal clearly the topographic form of geologic features. For the southern hemisphere, images are obtained with the NAC, which has a 1. For the northern hemisphere, when the spacecraft is closer to and moving faster over the surface, the WAC is used, because its Shown in Figure 1 is an example mosaic of four images acquired as part of the surface morphology campaign.

Color Base Map In addition to the surface morphology base map, MDIS is currently acquiring a color base map during the mission's first days.