MESSENGER News Thread, news, updates and discussion Options

[paxdan]

Launched on August 3rd 2004, NASA's MESSENGER will become the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.

News and updates are availbale via Johns Hopkins University MESSENGER website and the Kennedy Space Center's MESSENGER website.

There will be an earth flyby in August followed by a couple of swings by Venus and three velocity scrubbing passages past mecury before the craft enters orbit in March 2011.

April 18, 2005 status report from JHU. Extensive JHU FAQs page here.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

This is the very last component of Messenger that hasn't already been tried out. (Andy Dantzler said at the COMPLEX meeting that the craft has had a few software hiccups, but no hardware problems whatsoever so far.)

[tedstryk]

This is the very last component of Messenger that hasn't already been tried out.  (Andy Dantzler said at the COMPLEX meeting that the craft has had a few software hiccups, but no hardware problems whatsoever so far.)

What is "this" referring to? The instruments I spoke of or some earlier post?

[JRehling]

What is "this" referring to?  The instruments I spoke of or some earlier post?

The main thruster is apparently "this". It will be fired for the first time in this manuever. If "this" works, then we can have high expectations of a successful mission.

For no particular timely reason, I will re-voice the angst that it is so long between launch and any interesting science (even a Venus flyby)... If the earlier launch window had been hit, the mission would have been accelerated by *years*. The launch window that was used seems to have been about the worst one possible in terms of cruise duration.

[tasp]

The main thruster is apparently "this". It will be fired for the first time in this manuever. If "this"    works, then we can have high expectations of a successful mission.

For no particular timely reason, I will re-voice the angst that it is so long between launch and any interesting science (even a Venus flyby)... If the earlier launch window had been hit, the mission would have been accelerated by *years*. The launch window that was used seems to have been about the worst one possible in terms of cruise duration.

Has anyone looked at return paths from Mercury to earth via Mercury, Venus and earth gravitational assists?

[JRehling]

Has anyone looked at return paths from Mercury to earth via Mercury, Venus and earth gravitational assists?

It should be roughly symmetrical. You can't make the planets reverse direction, but conceptually...

The big problem is that a trip to Mercury starts with a huge rocket on the surface of the Earth. Getting a big rocket to the surface of Mercury is going to be a problem. The requirement would be at least to reach Mercury escape velocity and then enter a minimum-energy transfer orbit from Mercury's aphelion to Venus. Some additional savings could be had by using Mercury flybys to pump the orbit out to Venus. The rocket capable of that operation has to be the *payload* of some other rocket. The demands are incredible, certainly beyond any unmanned mission ever flown.

There would be an energy savings if, like Apollo, a remote rendezvous took place, so that the return fuel for the interplanetary cruise did not have to be landed onto the surface of Mercury. This would help, but the demands would still be huge (a rocket that could perform the cruise would have to enter Mercury orbit no matter how you look at it).

Look, it's just not going to happen in our lifetime!