NASA has broken the news that its Messenger probe has finally reached the planet Mercury and managed to successfully enter an orbit. That orbit was achieved at 9pm EDT on Thursday.
The good news will come as a relief to anyone who has worked on the mission as the probe took 6.5 years to get there with no guarantee something wouldn’t go wrong on the way or during the crucial orbit engine burn.
Messenger now safely orbits the planet and scientists may finally get some answers to long-held questions about how Mercury works. No doubt it holds many secrets that will surprise us all over the coming years, but there are specific questions we could get answers to quickly.
As you may know, the planet has a very high concentration of iron making up 65% of its entire core. That core is also very large and covered by a very thin crust of magnesium and silicates. It is hoped we can now find out how that came to be as it’s so unusual.
Mercury is generally a very strange planet. Being so close to the sun it has a year only a quarter the length of our own, but it rotates so slowly a day is 6 (Earth) months long. At the same time, Mercury manages to have a global magnetic field just like ours, but scientists can’t yet figure out how or why. Mercury is just rather confusing.
The investigation of the planet will not be starting just yet as NASA is more concerned with ensuring everything still works on the Messenger probe. So from March 23rd until April 3rd all systems will be thoroughly checked. Then on April 4th the “science phase” begins.
Here’s a video NASA made before the orbit was achieved that gives you some more information about Messenger, the mission, and the planet: