Messenger

Messenger, in full Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging, U.S. spacecraft that studied Mercury’s surface and environment. The name was selected in honour of ancient Greek observers who perceived Mercury in its 88-day orbit of the Sun and named it for the messenger of the gods (Hermes, known to the Romans as Mercury).

Messenger: Mercury

View of Earth from the Messenger captured by the Mercury Dual Imaging System's wide-angle cameraSee all videos for this article

Messenger was launched on August 3, 2004, by a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Its first flybys were of Earth, on August 2, 2005, and of Venus, on October 24, 2006, and June 5, 2007. Flybys of Mercury happened on January 14 and October 6, 2008, and on September 29, 2009. During the fourth encounter, on March 17, 2011, a thruster maneuver inserted Messenger into a 200 × 15,193-km (124 × 9,420-mile) orbit with a period of 12 hours around Mercury. Over the next Mercury year (88 Earth days), Messenger’s orbit was subject to the effects of solar gravity, so two final burns were needed to maintain the orbit. The nominal mission lasted one year and was subsequently extended for another year. The spacecraft crashed on the planet’s surface after running out of fuel on April 29, 2015. Messenger was the first mission to Mercury since the flybys of Mariner 10 in 1974 and the first to orbit the planet.

Instruments on Messenger included a laser altimeter that profiled the surface of Mercury and a dual-imaging system with wide-angle and telephoto optics and filters that spanned wavelengths from violet light to the near infrared. Other instruments measured particles in Mercury’s magnetosphere, X-rays and gamma rays produced by cosmic-ray collisions with the surface, and magnetic fields.

Messenger: Mercury

Messenger’s most-notable finding was confirming the presence of large amounts of water ice in permanently shadowed craters at Mercury’s poles. Messenger’s first flyby revealed that the planet’s craters are only half as deep as those of the Moon. Mercury’s Caloris impact basin, one of the youngest and largest impact features in the solar system, was found to have evidence of volcanic vents. Messenger also discovered lobate scarps, which are huge cliffs at the top of crustal faults. Those structures indicate that the planet, as it cooled early in its history, shrank by a third more than what had previously been believed. Messenger also discovered that Mercury’s core is much larger than previously thought and extends from the centre to about 85 percent of the planet’s radius. It found several possible mascons in Mercury’s northern hemisphere that are similar to those found on the Moon, and it discovered evidence that Mercury was geologically active even after the formation of the Caloris basin 3.8 billion years ago.