Mercury Orbit Insertion, Events and Discussion leading up to MOI |
Mercury Orbit Insertion, Events and Discussion leading up to MOI |
Nov 25 2009, 05:30 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1018 Joined: 29-November 05 From: Seattle, WA, USA Member No.: 590 |
Excerpts from a new press release from the Messenger Team:
QUOTE 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 |
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Mar 7 2011, 04:55 AM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8789 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
No news is good news now. I expect the future Messenger main mission thread(s) to get very busy indeed, though...Mercury is not as simple as it seems. (Disclaimer: no inside knowledge claimed, just a very confident prediction. We've consistently found that upon close enough examination no Solar System body is merely a nondescript rock...in itself, one of the most profound revelations of UMSF.) -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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