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.

[RichardLeis]

Spacecraft operations and public releases are processes that are changing, and I think we should continue to be patient. It is true that teams use to hold onto data until they could get all the science out of them that they could. This philosophy is slowly changing, thanks to the MER team and others.

I know we are taxpayers (and I guess part of my income also comes from other taxpayers) but taxpayers also do not always know the ins and outs of the process. Sometimes their expectations are greater than reality. While it can be frustrating, change does come.

From experience, I know that sometimes the reasons why there are delays has nothing to do with philosophy, but everything to do with technical or logistical matters. Sometimes there are unexpected processing hardware and software failures, deaths in the family, unexpected DSN coverage issues, etc. Often there is not time to give the public the full reckoning to which they may feel entitled.

The desire to release data as quickly as possible is spreading through the community (and may even hit Europe someday!) The public, the taxpayer, should be careful with their sense of entitlement and let the process unfold, unless, of course, they choose to enter the field and help introduce new ideas.