PLANETARY MUSINGS

Venus 2 Flyby a Success

MESSENGER's second flyby of Venus yesterday was a success! The spacecraft whizzed by the cloud tops at more than 30,000 miles per hour and changed its velocity by more than 15,000 miles per hour all to alter its orbit in preparation for its date with Mercury. Congratulations to the whole team of MESSENGER that designed, built and operates the mission!

The first data should start coming down on June 7-8 and then we can start learning what these new data tell us about our sister planet as well as fine-tune anything we need to in time for the first flyby of Mercury in 33 years next January.

More details are in the public press release from APL and at the MESSENGER website and NASA's MESSENGER webpage.