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

[mchan]

The orientation of the day side is to the right vs. to the left in Where is Messenger? page on the Messenger website. I had wondered about the latter since Messenger is ahead of Mercury in its orbit waiting for the planet to "catch up" to it. EOTSS appears to have the view in accord with the convention of North pointing up.

[MarkG]

The orientation of the day side is to the right vs. to the left in Where is Messenger? page on the Messenger website. I had wondered about the latter since Messenger is ahead of Mercury in its orbit waiting for the planet to "catch up" to it. EOTSS appears to have the view in accord with the convention of North pointing up.

Actually, Messenger is catching up with Mercury, with higher ellipticity in its current (not for long!) orbit, Messenger's speed at perihelion is greater than Mercury's.