If you step out this evening or or tomorrow evening, you might catch a glimpse of the seldom-seen planet – Mercury. Known as the Incredible Shrinking Planet, Mercury is about to slip back out of sight as it disappears behind the Sun until it emerges later this year.
Right: Mercury over the Rockies as seen from Denver – Credit: Jeffrey Beall.
Meanwhile, a little known NASA mission – MESSENGER – got a boost from it’s thrusters to place it on trajectory for another gravity-assisted sling around planet Venus toward it’s ultimate goal of orbiting the closest planet to the sun.
New Scientist has some information about NASA’s MESSENGER mission:
Messenger probe nudged towards Venus flyby
NASA’s first mission to Mercury in more than 30 years completed its final trajectory correction manoeuvre on Wednesday before a flyby of Venus in October 2006.
Messenger – short for Mercury, Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging – is on a 7.9 billion kilometre path to becoming the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.
Note: words in the New Scientist article are spelled correctly – at least in the UK where the magazine is based.