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Old 03-19-2011, 07:30 AM   #1
kennyc
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Messenger arrives in orbit around Mercury
Mercury, the solar system's smallest planet, has gained a yearlong visitor from Earth - a spacecraft named Messenger that mission controllers guided successfully into a long, looping orbit around the planet Thursday night after a six-year flight across 4.9 billion miles of space.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...MN6Q1IEORV.DTL

U.S. spacecraft now have orbited six of the solar system's eight planets in all: Earth, first, in 1957; Mars in 1971; Venus in 1975; Jupiter in 1995; Saturn in 2004; and now, Mercury, in 2011 ...
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Old 03-19-2011, 09:17 PM   #2
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Just entered orbit :

http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...?taxonomyId=13
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Old 03-19-2011, 10:26 PM   #3
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KennyC - According to Wikipedia, only the Russians managed orbiting is 1957, the first US satellite made orbit in January of 1958 (Explorer 1):

Quote:
Explorer 1 (1958 Alpha 1)[5] was the first Earth satellite of the United States, launched as part of its participation in the International Geophysical Year. The mission followed the first two Earth satellites the previous year, the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 and 2, beginning the Cold War Space Race between the two nations.

Explorer 1 was launched on January 31, 1958 at 22:48 Eastern Time (equal to February 1, 03:48 UTC because the time change goes past midnight) atop the first Juno booster from LC-26 at the Cape Canaveral Missile Annex, Florida. It was the first spacecraft to detect the Van Allen radiation belt,[6] returning data until its batteries were exhausted after nearly four months. It remained in orbit until 1970, and has been followed by more than 90 scientific spacecraft in the Explorer series.
Vanguard 1 was launched six weeks later, and is still up there:

Quote:
The Vanguard 1 satellite holds the record for being in space longer than any other man-made object. On March 17, 2008 it logged its 50th year in Earth orbit.
Geez, am I that old? I was ten then, and I still remember the shock of hearing about Sputnik!
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Old 03-20-2011, 06:38 AM   #4
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Interesting, thanks!
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Old 03-20-2011, 09:28 AM   #5
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Looking forward to seeing some great imagery ....
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Old 03-20-2011, 09:38 AM   #6
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The part about the sodium tail was news to me also. I would imagine any sodium burned off eons ago. Maybe a sodium-bearing meteorite crashed, then was burning off?
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Old 03-30-2011, 07:27 AM   #7
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First photos of Mercury from Messenger in orbit:

http://www.tgdaily.com/space-feature...-mercury-photo
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Old 03-30-2011, 07:46 AM   #8
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Thanks Kenny - nice (pffft) to see a professional needs a spell-checker !
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Old 03-30-2011, 08:12 AM   #9
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I noticed that too. And unfortunately it seems to be more and more prevalent these days.
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Old 03-31-2011, 07:26 AM   #10
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The photos so far and more info from the Messenger Team Website:


http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/...p?gallery_id=2

This one from the earlier fly-by is huge - very high resolution and very amazing:

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/...s_high_res.png

.
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Old 03-31-2011, 11:19 AM   #11
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Stunning images Kenny, thanks ...

Some of those impact craters have spread their debris over large expanses....
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