Messenger Mission to Mercury

Posted by SpaceSightSeer on May 4, 2009 under Unmanned Missions | Be the First to Comment

Messenger Mission to Mercury

Messenger, NASA’s first spacecraft to visit Mercury has completed two flybys of the planet Venus and two of Mercury itself.  Another flyby of Mercury is planned for later this fall before beginning a yearlong orbit in March 2011. JHU’s Applied Physics Lab has begun to release images from the October 2008 flyby of Mercury. According to investigators, the latest images revealed gave scientists a look at a previously unknown impact basin. Dubbed the Rembrant Basin, the feature is more than 430 miles or roughly the  distance between Washington, D.C., and Boston.