MESSENGER ARRIVES, Mercury Orbit Insertion Options

[Astro0]

Less than 20 hours now until the MESSENGER spacecraft fires its engine to enter orbit at Mercury.

Live Webcast March 17th – broadcast starts at 0030 UTC.

Follow the progress: http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/mer_orbit.html.
There will be commentary on the mission, real-time coverage of the maneuver, animation of what the spacecraft is doing, a view of the carrier’s Doppler as they receive it, and live video from MESSENGER Mission Operations.

Remember that the Canberra DSN is providing two-way communication with MESSENGER
We'll be using both DSS43 (70-metre) and DSS34 (34-metre) antennas.

Good luck to the team at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).

[JohnVV]

a few days old
I have been ill

Good to know! I tried getting MESSENGER to work in Celestia with the spice kernels available from the PDS, but it keeps balking

same here there is some "odd" thing going on
i has been a few months but right now celestia thinks it is out by mars

right now i am thinkint to just skip the first 3 trips around and use only the CURRENT and forward
then fix it .
- quote from "CAP-Team"

@Volcanopele you can find good spice kernels on the NAIF FTP site in the PDS folder for use in Celestia, including the main mission period.

for those here that do not know that address
ftp://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/pds/data/