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Who would expect water on the nearest planet to the Sun?
NASA just released the first ever topographic model of Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun.
The MESSENGER spacecraft spent four years orbiting Mercury, gathering valuable information and sending it back to Earth. But even in its final moments, as it crashed towards the surface of the planet, the spacecraft still did its job - it reported that Mercury has a magnetic field, likely millions of years old.
If you’ve always wanted to choose the name of stuff from outer space but never got the chance… now’s your time to shine! NASA is offering you the chance to name one of the craters of Mercury in honour of the MESSENGER mission, which is nearing its final days. Apply or Vote HERE. NASA, together with Johns […]
The fist planet from the sun is the unlikeliest place you’d expect to find water ice, but new tantalizing evidence beamed back by the Messenger spacecraft orbiting Mercury suggests just so. On the surface of Mercury, temperatures can reach boiling 752º Fahrenheit (400ºC), clearly water in any state can not exist. At its poles, however, things take a […]
The planet closest to the sun is very hot, yet very cold at the same time. It may even be a bit icy. The Mercury Messenger spacecraft entered the planet’s orbit on March 17, and since then, NASA has showed some of the pictures taken by it, which are absolutely amazing. The visit to Mercury […]
As reported earlier on Thursday morning, the Messenger NASA spacecraft was scheduled for an evening jump into Mercury’s orbit through a tricky maneuver which involved a “burn” – essentially “riding its brakes” by firing its main thruster – to slow the spacecraft enough to be captured by Mercury’s gravity. At 8:45 p.m. ET, the procedure […]
After a six year journey in which it traveled over 6 billion miles, the Messenger spacecraft is finally anticipated to enter Mercury’s orbit in a tricky maneuver which is scheduled today, which should mark the first man-made object to orbit the tiny planet. The goal of the mission is to provide scientists with data on […]
MESSENGER is a spacecraft which recently made a flyby near Mercury and it gave scientists a whole new perspective over the planet. Researchers are amazed by the wealth of images and data which show a surprising diversity of geological processes which took and are still taking place and a very different magnetosphere from the one […]
