Mercury Orbit Insertion, Events and Discussion leading up to MOI Options

[Greg Hullender]

Excerpts from a new press release from the Messenger Team:

Deep-Space Maneuver Positions MESSENGER for Mercury Orbit Insertion

The Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft completed its fifth and final deep-space maneuver of the mission today, providing the expected velocity change needed to place the spacecraft on course to enter into orbit about Mercury in March 2011. . . . today's maneuver began at 4:45 p.m. EST.
Mission controllers at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., verified the start of the maneuver about 12 minutes, 49 seconds later, when the first signals indicating spacecraft thruster activity reached NASA's Deep Space Network tracking station outside Goldstone, Calif.

"The team was well-prepared for the maneuver," said MESSENGER Mission Systems Engineer Eric Finnegan, of APL. "Initial data analysis indicates an extremely accurate maneuver execution. After sifting through all the post-burn data I expect we will find ourselves right on target."

--Greg

[jasedm]

A little over three weeks to go! - have been genning-up on the upcoming orbit insertion and the mission generally - very much looking forward to results from the mission (especially the data on any volatiles at the poles)

The orbit insertion is unusual I believe; in that the burn and turns will be 'line of sight' from earth throughout, so no nail-biting, peanut-eating occultation phase whilst we wait for re-acquisition of signal to confirm whether insertion went as planned. Four DSN stations will be tracking, with a fifth as backup during OI. Full information at the official site here

Astonishing that the spacecraft has travelled 4.8 billion miles already - enough to take it well past Pluto's orbit had it been heading outwards from the sun.

We've been spoiled by having unfettered access to all the raw images from the MER's and Cassini as soon as they're available, but I understand this won't be the case with Messenger, so we'll have to be patient with image releases as this mission unfolds...

Incidentally, if all goes to plan, by August this year there will be amazingly, functioning spacecraft in orbit at :

Mercury (1)
Venus (1)
Earth (dozens)
Moon (2)
Mars (3) +2 on the surface
Vesta (1)
Saturn (1)

Very lucky to be living through this era.