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).

[Bjorn Jonsson]

The image is centered at approximately 15°E and 55°S. This is a major improvement over earlier imaging coverage in this area and of course there are going to be narrow angle images as well. At a quick glance nothing that looks especially interesting. There are fairly strong contrast/brightness variations associated with some of the craters. Many scarps. And there is an interesting looking crater plus some associated features at (280,255).