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MESSENGER was a NASA robotic space probe that orbited the planet Mercury between 2011 and 2015, studying Mercury's chemical composition, geology, and magnetic field. [9] [10] The name is a backronym for Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging, and a reference to the messenger god Mercury from Roman mythology.
MESSENGER achieved 100% mapping of Mercury on March 6, 2013, and completed its first year-long extended mission on March 17, 2013. [20] In February 2013, NASA published the most detailed and accurate 3D map of Mercury to date, assembled from thousands of images taken by MESSENGER. [21]
NASA's Mercury Surface, Space, Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft launched aboard a Delta II rocket in August 2004. The spacecraft made the 4.9-billion-mile trek to Mercury, with 15 trips around the sun and flybys of the Earth and Venus along the way. The spacecraft reached Mercury in 2008, with flybys of that planet ...
MESSENGER (an acronym of MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) was a robotic spacecraft that orbited the planet Mercury, the first spacecraft to do so. [82] The 485-kilogram (1,069 lb) spacecraft was launched aboard a Delta II rocket in August 2004 to study Mercury's chemical composition, geology , and magnetic field .
Comparison of NASA Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle spacecraft with their launch vehicles. This is a list of NASA missions, both crewed and robotic, since the establishment of NASA in 1957. There are over 80 currently active science missions. [1]
In July 1999, NASA selected MESSENGER and Deep Impact as the next Discovery Program missions. [149] MESSENGER was the first Mercury orbiter and mission to that planet since Mariner 10. [149] Both missions targeted a launch in late 2004 and the cost was constrained at about US$300 million each. [149]
In an April Fools' Day joke in 2012, NASA announced that the MESSENGER spacecraft supposedly discovered a moon in orbit around Mercury, which they named jokingly Caduceus, in reference to the caduceus, the staff carried by the Roman god Mercury. [7]
The Solar System Family Portrait is an image of many of the Solar System's planets and moons acquired by MESSENGER during November 2010 from approximately the orbit of Mercury. The mosaic is intended to be complementary to the Voyager 1 ' s Family Portrait acquired from the outer edge of the Solar System on February 14, 1990.