Venus Flyby Helps Drive The Message Home

MERCURY RISING

The MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission.

by Staff Writers
Laurel MD (SPX) May 30, 2007
The MESSENGER trajectory correction maneuver (TCM-16) completed on May 25 lasted 36 seconds and adjusted the spacecraft's velocity by 0.212 meters per second (0.696 feet per second). The movement targeted the spacecraft close to the intended aim point 337 kilometers (209 miles) above the surface of Venus for the probe's June 5 flyby of that planet.

The maneuver started at 12:00 p.m. EDT. Mission controllers at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., verified the start of TCM-16 about 7 minutes later, when the first signals indicating thruster activity reached NASA's Deep Space Network tracking station outside Madrid, Spain.

"Today's operation completed just as planned," says Mission Operations Manager Andy Calloway of APL. "All subsystems were nominal going into the maneuver, and the burn cutoff occurred right at the expected time. Now that TCM-16 is behind us, we are focused on loading the Venus flyby command load to the spacecraft next week."

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MERCURY RISING

Deep Space Radar Cuts Mercury to Core As Messenger Lines Up For Venus Flyby

Pasadena CA (SPX) May 04, 2007
Researchers working with high-precision planetary radars, including the Goldstone Solar System Radar of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., have discovered strong evidence that the planet Mercury has a molten core. The finding explains a more than three-decade old planetary mystery that began with the flight of JPL's Mariner 10 spacecraft. The research appears in this week's issue of the journal Science.

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