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MESSENGER’s in orbit of Mercury!
Just like clockwork! I’m looking for a year of new discoveries about this nearest planet to the sun.
They’re tweeting at http://www.twitter.com/messenger2011.
MESSENGER’s web site is at http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/.
NASA’s MESSENGER page is at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/main/.
03/17/11 – Ephemeris – MESSENGER spacecraft arrives at Mercury tonight
Ephemeris for St. Patrick’s Day, Thursday, March 17th. The sun will rise at 7:51. It’ll be up for 11 hours and 59 minutes, setting at 7:50. The moon, 2 days before full, will set at 6:48 tomorrow morning.
This evening the MESSENGER Spacecraft will fire its main engine for 15 minutes to put itself in orbit of the planet Mercury. The rocket firing will be at 8:45 this evening. Due to light time delays caused by Mercury being 97 million miles away, we won’t know if the rocket fired until 8:54. While its high gain antenna won’t be pointed at earth, we should get a signal from its omni- directional antenna. We did get a signal from Cassini with its orbital insertion of Saturn in 2004, and that was nearly a billion miles away. I don’t know if NASA TV’s covering the insertion live, but Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory is having a live webcast. Google “messenger mercury live orbital insertion” It was the first hit. I’ll have the address on the blog. http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/mer_orbit.html
* Times are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.
Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog 