MESSENGER News Thread, news, updates and discussion |
MESSENGER News Thread, news, updates and discussion |
Apr 20 2005, 11:22 AM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 562 Joined: 29-March 05 Member No.: 221 |
Launched on August 3rd 2004, NASA's MESSENGER will become the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.
News and updates are availbale via Johns Hopkins University MESSENGER website and the Kennedy Space Center's MESSENGER website. There will be an earth flyby in August followed by a couple of swings by Venus and three velocity scrubbing passages past mecury before the craft enters orbit in March 2011. April 18, 2005 status report from JHU. Extensive JHU FAQs page here. |
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Sep 13 2005, 04:01 PM
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#61
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Member Group: Members Posts: 624 Joined: 10-August 05 Member No.: 460 |
The only problem with the timeline is that at orbital insertion, I will be as old and onry as Bruce
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Sep 13 2005, 04:36 PM
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#62
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Member Group: Members Posts: 345 Joined: 2-May 05 Member No.: 372 |
QUOTE (JRehling @ Sep 13 2005, 11:16 AM) You can cover a box in foil and put a radio dish on it, place an amateur astronomer and a Celestron inside, and call it a spacecraft flying within 0.25 AU of Venus. I mean a spacecraft...in space. Within a few thousand km of Venus (or however close Messenger is going to get). |
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Sep 13 2005, 04:50 PM
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#63
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Member Group: Members Posts: 510 Joined: 17-March 05 From: Southeast Michigan Member No.: 209 |
From the Messenger Website FAQ:
QUOTE The Venus flybys provide important opportunities to calibrate MESSENGER’s instruments on the way to Mercury and make new scientific observations of Earth’s “sister planet.” The team plans to image the upper cloud layers at visible and near-infrared wavelengths for comparison with earlier spacecraft observations. Since they're planning on imaging at visible wavelengths, and given the care they took to do that awesome movie from the Earth flyby, I'd assume we're going to see some kind of true color image releases... -------------------- --O'Dave
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Sep 14 2005, 07:36 PM
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#64
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Guests |
"The only problem with the timeline is that at orbital insertion, I will be as old and ornery as Bruce."
No you won't. By then, I will be significantly older and much more ornery. |
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Sep 14 2005, 07:45 PM
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#65
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
You don't need to be old to be ornery (though it helps). I'd say the orneriest person I ever met was Harlan Ellison, back in the late '70s when he was a rather young man. He was ornerier then than most people get to be in their advanced years...
-the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Sep 15 2005, 05:52 AM
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#66
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Let me add to my reputation for orneriness: if you ever see him again, tell him to get off his damned duff and either publish "The Last Dangerous Visions" or at least release the stories he acquired for it from now-dead authors. The very last stories by Edgar Pangborn and Tom Reamy have now been moldering in a box in his office for three straight decades, and I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't a few more stories there by authors who have since gone to their reward.
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Sep 15 2005, 08:09 AM
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#67
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1870 Joined: 20-February 05 Member No.: 174 |
Harlan Ellison: "The Mouth that Walks like a Man"
Being near Harlan is like the Ancient Chinese Curse: May You Live in Interesting Times. Some of the LDV stories have been released and published, including a postumous collaboration between Cordwainer Smith and his wife, I believe. |
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Sep 15 2005, 08:48 PM
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#68
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2488 Joined: 17-April 05 From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK Member No.: 239 |
QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Sep 15 2005, 06:52 AM) Let me add to my reputation for orneriness: if you ever seen him again, tell him to get off his damned duff and either publish "The Last Dangerous Visions" or at least release the stories he acquired for it from now-dead authors. The very last stories by Edgar Pangborn and Tom Reamy have now been moldering in a box in his office for three straight decades, and I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't a few more stories there by authors who have since gone to their reward. Bruce: Yup. The arrogance of the horrible wee big-head, and his terrible attitude to TLDV's contributors (many of whom are now, as you rightly say, ex-contributors), are beyond belief. Bob Shaw -------------------- Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Nov 6 2005, 02:20 AM
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#69
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As I noted in the "Future Venus Missions" thread below, we now have a very detailed description of the science measurements that Messenger will make during its second Venus flyby in June 2007. (It won't make any during its first one because it's near solar conjunction.)
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/vexag/Nov2005/MESSENGER_VEXAG.pdf Projected arrival data at Mercury for Bepi Colombo, by the way, is now 2017. |
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Nov 14 2005, 11:27 AM
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#70
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Member Group: Members Posts: 370 Joined: 12-September 05 From: France Member No.: 495 |
Messenger Status Report :
MESSENGER Team Prepares for December Deep Space Maneuver (DSM-1), when the craft’s large bipropellant thruster will be fired for the first time. http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/stat...t_11_11_05.html Rakhir |
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Nov 30 2005, 01:48 PM
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#71
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Member Group: Members Posts: 235 Joined: 2-August 05 Member No.: 451 |
I saw that Messenger is currently closer to the Sun than Venus is. This is not unexpected, but I thought it was an interesting milestone.
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Nov 30 2005, 03:19 PM
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#72
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Interplanetary Dumpster Diver Group: Admin Posts: 4404 Joined: 17-February 04 From: Powell, TN Member No.: 33 |
QUOTE (Rakhir @ Nov 14 2005, 11:27 AM) Messenger Status Report : MESSENGER Team Prepares for December Deep Space Maneuver (DSM-1), when the craft’s large bipropellant thruster will be fired for the first time. http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/stat...t_11_11_05.html Rakhir I am a bit surprised, since I don't think it will be during the communications blackout, that they aren't taking Magnetometer and Energetic Particle and Plasma Spectrometer data, since that wouldn't require a large amount of bandwith or maneuvering. -------------------- |
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Nov 30 2005, 03:23 PM
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#73
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This is the very last component of Messenger that hasn't already been tried out. (Andy Dantzler said at the COMPLEX meeting that the craft has had a few software hiccups, but no hardware problems whatsoever so far.)
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Nov 30 2005, 03:52 PM
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#74
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Interplanetary Dumpster Diver Group: Admin Posts: 4404 Joined: 17-February 04 From: Powell, TN Member No.: 33 |
QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Nov 30 2005, 03:23 PM) This is the very last component of Messenger that hasn't already been tried out. (Andy Dantzler said at the COMPLEX meeting that the craft has had a few software hiccups, but no hardware problems whatsoever so far.) What is "this" referring to? The instruments I spoke of or some earlier post? -------------------- |
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Nov 30 2005, 04:37 PM
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#75
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
QUOTE (tedstryk @ Nov 30 2005, 07:52 AM) The main thruster is apparently "this". It will be fired for the first time in this manuever. If "this" works, then we can have high expectations of a successful mission. For no particular timely reason, I will re-voice the angst that it is so long between launch and any interesting science (even a Venus flyby)... If the earlier launch window had been hit, the mission would have been accelerated by *years*. The launch window that was used seems to have been about the worst one possible in terms of cruise duration. |
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