MESSENGER ARRIVES, Mercury Orbit Insertion |
MESSENGER ARRIVES, Mercury Orbit Insertion |
Mar 17 2011, 05:29 AM
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 3108 Joined: 21-December 05 From: Canberra, Australia Member No.: 615 |
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). |
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Apr 4 2011, 02:26 PM
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10167 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
Ranging and Doppler might make some improvements to the orbit data, and the rotation axis orientation, though maybe not much improvement over what radar has already given us. Other bodies? - I can't see that. The questions you are interested in are probably addressed most thoroughly with radar, at least out to Saturn's orbit. Goldstone and Arecibo routinely do radar ranging and doppler for solar system targets.
Phil (PS - new pics up again!) -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke Maps for download (free PD: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Cartography.pdf NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain) |
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