Results tagged “MESSENGER”

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) - the arbiter of planetary and satellite nomenclature since its inception in 1919 - recently approved a proposal from the MESSENGER Science Team to assign names to nine impact craters on Mercury. In keeping with the established naming theme for craters on Mercury, all of the newly designated features are named after famous deceased artists, musicians, or authors or other contributors to the humanities.

NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft has identified large concentrations of hydrogen at Mercury's north pole, thought to be in the form of water ice, researchers announced today.

MESSENGER has discovered assemblages of tectonic landforms unlike any previously found on Mercury or elsewhere in the Solar System.

MESSENGER completed its 1,000th orbit of the planet closest to the Sun at 11:22 p.m. EDT on 22 June 2012. "Reaching this milestone is yet another testimony to the hard work and dedication of the full MESSENGER team that has designed, launched, and operated this highly successful spacecraft," says the mission trajectory lead Jim McAdams of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.

NASA has announced that it will extend the MESSENGER mission for an additional year of orbital operations at Mercury beyond the planned end of the primary mission on March 17, 2012. The MESSENGER probe became the first spacecraft to orbit the innermost planet on March 18, 2011.

The IAU recently approved a proposal from the MESSENGER Science Team to confer names on 16 impact craters on Mercury. The newly named craters were imaged during the mission's first two flybys of Mercury in January and October last year.