Mercury is Tectonically Active, NASA “Images obtained by NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft reveal previously undetected small fault scarps– cliff-like landforms that resemble stair steps. These scarps are small enough that scientists believe they must be geologically young, which means Mercury is still contracting and that Earth is not the only tectonically active planet in our solar system, as previously thought.”

MESSENGER’s Operations at Mercury Extended “MESSENGER mission controllers conducted a maneuver yesterday to raise the spacecraft’s minimum altitude sufficiently to extend orbital operations and further delay the probe’s inevitable impact onto Mercury’s surface. The previous maneuver, completed on March 18, raised MESSENGER to an altitude at closest approach from 11.6 kilometers (7.2 miles) to 34.4 kilometers (21.4 miles) above the planet’s surface. Because of progressive changes to the orbit over […]

NASA and Italian Space Agency Sign Agreement on Exploration of Mercury, NASA “At a meeting in Rome Thursday, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Italian Space Agency (ASI) President Enrico Saggese signed a Memorandum of Understanding for cooperation on the European Space Agency- (ESA) led BepiColombo mission to Mercury, strengthening mutually beneficial cooperation between NASA and ASI in planetary exploration.”

Mercury 100% Coverage, NASA “At the very end of 2012, MESSENGER obtained the final image needed to view 100% of Mercury’s surface under daylight conditions. The mosaics shown here cover all of Mercury’s surface and were produced by using the monochrome mosaic released by NASA’s Planetary Data System (PDS) on March 8, 2013, as the base. The full resolution mosaics are available for download on MESSENGER’s Global Mosaics webpage.” Related: […]

Celebrating America’s First Manned Orbital Flight – Friendship 7 50th Anniversary “February 20th marks the 50th anniversary of the day in 1962 when U.S. Senator John Glenn piloted his Friendship 7 spacecraft on the first U.S. orbital mission. This video recounts that event in history.” – @SPOTScott (Scott Parazynski): “No way to properly thank my boyhood hero and eventual crewmate, John Glenn- My fav photo: bloodletting w/Dracula fangs!” (Image) – […]

Johnsville Centrifuge Gondola Returns Home To New Museum i>”May 5, 2011 was a historic day for Bucks County as the original gondola of the Johnsville Centrifuge that was used for training America’s early space heroes returned to Warminster. It had spent the last 47 years at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Suitland, Maryland. All of America’s […]

First MESSENGER Image of Mercury From Orbit “Early this morning, at 5:20 am EDT, MESSENGER captured this historic image of Mercury. This image is the first ever obtained from a spacecraft in orbit about the Solar System’s innermost planet. Over the subsequent six hours, MESSENGER acquired an additional 363 images before downlinking some of the data to Earth. The MESSENGER team is currently looking over the newly returned data, which […]

MESSENGER Is In Orbit Around Mercury “NASA’s MESSENGER probe has become the first spacecraft to enter orbit about Mercury. At 9:10 p.m. EDT, engineers in the MESSENGER Mission Operations Center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., received radiometric signals confirming nominal burn shutdown and successful insertion of the MESSENGER probe into orbit around the planet Mercury.” Keith’s note: Updates on Twitter at MercuryToday

MESSENGER Primed for Mercury Orbit “After more than a dozen laps through the inner solar system and six planetary flybys, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft will move into orbit around Mercury on at around 9 p.m. EDT on March 17, 2011. The durable spacecraft — carrying seven science instruments and fortified against the blistering environs near the Sun — will be the first to orbit the innermost planet.”

MESSENGER Is Ten Days from Mercury Orbit Insertion “Ten days from now – on March 17 – the MESSENGER spacecraft will execute a 15-minute maneuver that will place it into orbit about Mercury, making it the first craft ever to do so, and initiating a one-year science campaign to understand the innermost planet. Starting today, antennas from each of the three Deep Space Network (DSN) ground stations will begin a […]