Messenger launch, NASA's Mission to Mercury

Messenger launch, NASA's Mission to Mercury.

Despite a 24-hour delay, a NASA spacecraft bound for Mercury was successfully launched early Tuesday, the first step in a seven-year journey to the small planet.

A Boeing-built Delta 2 rocket shot the spacecraft MESSENGER off planet at 2:15:56 a.m. EDT (0615:56 GMT) on a pillar of flame above its launch pad at NASA's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The on-time space shot easily made its 12-second window, with none of the delays that scrubbed a previous attempt to launch the spacecraft on Aug. 2.

"This was another great Boeing and NASA success as we bid MESSENGER farewell," said Chuck Dovale, NASA launch director at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, after the launch.

MESSENGER, an acronym for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging, is the first NASA spacecraft to Mercury since Mariner 10 passed by the planet three times between 1974 and 1975.

""Mercury is very hard to get to," explained MESSENGER science team member Ralph McNutt, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, during the Aug. 2 launch attempt. "To get there, the MESSENGER spacecraft is about 55 percent fuel, about the same amount as the Cassini spacecraft to Saturn."

MESSENGER is also expected to provide some hints to questions about Mercury's density, interior and exterior composition, as well as its surface features and magnetic field. The spacecraft is taking a roundabout path to Mercury, swinging by three inner planets before entering orbit around Mercury in March 2011.

There were some weather concerns prior to MESSENGER's liftoff. Nearby cloud cover, and the failure of launch weather balloons to reach high into the atmosphere gave launch planners some concern. But the clouds dissipated and one last batch of weather balloons reached their designated height of 90,000 feet before launch.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• messenger
• nasa mercury
• launch

[happyrobot42]

It made it !

[lordoftheriffs79]

today it is making the orbital insertion maneuver... at last

[www41WorldUSAcom]

NASA Messenger Launch Mission to Mercury

[achibest]

nice...