PLANETARY MUSINGS

Entries for June 2007

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.

Venus Flyby 2

Late in the afternoon on Tuesday, June 5, 2007 the MESSENGER spacecraft is going to slingshot around Venus for the second time on it way to Mercury. The spacecraft will use Venus' gravity to assist in its journey to the solar system's inner most planet. During the first flyby of Venus last October the planet was on the far side of Sun from Earth (solar conjunction) and communication with the spacecraft was difficult at best, so no scientific data were taken, and MESSENGER flew by in a safe configuration with a closest approach of nearly 3000 km. On Tuesday the spacecraft will flyby as close as about 340 km and will be taking data this time with most of its instruments. The instruments onboard MESSENGER are optimized for surveying Mercury, however several are capable of taking important observations of Venus, particularly its atmosphere. It is also a great "dress rehearsal" for our first flyby of Mercury on January 14, 2008. There should be some exciting data from our sister planet coming down from MESSENGER in the next several weeks after the flyby. Several of these data will be compared with coordinated observations by ESA's Venus Express. We will be looking forward to some interesting new results in the coming months...