Wasn't sure whether to put this in news or here, but it seemed interesting enough to look at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12761025
Perfect mission apparently, everything went right.
The satellite carries a ceramic shield to protect itself from the sun, which is kind of cool, and it is now in a 12 hour highly elliptical orbit around the little planet.
It did six planetary fly-by's so as too manage its speed closely enough to get into mercury's orbit but not fall into the sun.
It will be in orbit for about a year, doing something like 730 orbits
that's pretty cool
"Seriously though, every time I see something like this I think 'Ooo, I'm living in the future'. Unfortunately it increasingly looks like it's going to be a cyberpunkish dystopia, where the poor eat recycled shit and the rich eat the poor." Evilsoup, on the future
Mercury is really underexplored ; I was waiting for Messenger to finally arrive and make some awesome discoveries.
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
Vendetta wrote:Richard Gatling was a pioneer in US national healthcare. On discovering that most soldiers during the American Civil War were dying of disease rather than gunshots, he turned his mind to, rather than providing better sanitary conditions and medical care for troops, creating a machine to make sure they got shot faster.
What are the factors that have to be taken into account for to compensate for proximity to the sun? An 'umbrella' of some sort, for sure, that is opaque to infrared so that the spacecraft is not fried. I don't think Mercury has much of an atmosphere. Is reflected light from the planet's surface a big issue?
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies,
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
It has a ceramic heat shield attached. Reflected light isn't enough of an issue to require shielding from that side, though.
From what I know, another issue is maintaining a stable orbit.
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
Reflected light may not be an issue, but infrared radiation is, which is why Messenger's orbit is highly elliptical:
MESSENGER wrote:The orbit is highly elliptical (egg-shaped), with the spacecraft passing 200 kilometers (124 miles) above the surface at the lowest point and more than 15,193 kilometers (9,420 miles) at the highest. At the outset of the orbital phase of the mission, the plane of the spacecraft’s orbit is inclined 82.5° to Mercury’s equator, and the lowest point in the orbit is reached at a latitude of 60° North.
The spacecraft’s orbit is elliptical rather than circular because the planet’s surface radiates back heat from the Sun. At an altitude of 200 km, the re-radiated heat from the planet alone is 4 times the solar intensity at Earth. By spending only a short portion of each orbit flying this close to the planet, the temperature of the spacecraft can be better regulated.
Time makes more converts than reason. -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
Is reflected light from the planet's surface a big issue?
Messengers survey equipment is apparently 'specially shielded'... there were no details in the article, so what it means is anyone's guess, but still...
"Seriously though, every time I see something like this I think 'Ooo, I'm living in the future'. Unfortunately it increasingly looks like it's going to be a cyberpunkish dystopia, where the poor eat recycled shit and the rich eat the poor." Evilsoup, on the future
I am seriously looking forward to some pics from Mercury. I wonder if we find any useful minerals there, and if it would be viable to send them back to Earth with a solar sail? Obviously, this would be a ways in the future, say maybe 20 years...
And don't forget, the Pluto probe will be making its rendezvous in about 3-4 years. Within a decade we'll have gone from one end of the Solar System to the other*. Kinda cool milestone.
People keep dissing NASA for short-shrifting manned spaceflight, but I have to admit, their robots rule the Solar System.
*Well, not all the way to the outer end, since there's stuff beyond Pluto, but Pluto is the "traditional" outer limit.
Something about Libertarianism always bothered me. Then one day, I realized what it was:
Libertarian philosophy can be boiled down to the phrase, "Work Will Make You Free."
In Libertarianism, there is no Government, so the Bosses are free to exploit the Workers.
In Communism, there is no Government, so the Workers are free to exploit the Bosses.
So in Libertarianism, man exploits man, but in Communism, its the other way around! If all you want to do is have some harmless, mindless fun, go H3RE INST3ADZ0RZ!! Grrr! Fight my Brute, you pansy!
Coyote, check out the "missions" page on the NASA website: they are running a STAGGERING amount of probes, satellites and telescopes and we're getting lots of cool new data by the minute.
We now possess detailed 0.5m/pixel maps of nearly the entire lunar surface. All from a SINGLE PROBE. Talk about bang for the buck!
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
So, finally after Google Earth, Google Moon and Google Mars, we can have Google Mercury too.
I'm nobody. Nobody at all. But the secrets of the universe don't mind. They reveal themselves to nobodies who care. -- Stereotypical spacecraft are pressurized. Less realistic spacecraft are pressurized to hold breathing atmosphere. Realistic spacecraft are pressurized because they are flying propellant tanks. -Isaac Kuo -- Good art has function as well as form. I hesitate to spend more than $50 on decorations of any kind unless they can be used to pummel an intruder into submission. -Sriad
That was one hell of an interesting orbital path it took to get to Mercury. You can see them trying to brake the spacecraft to lose the excess delta-v that it has so it can get to the close in orbit.
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
PeZook wrote:We now possess detailed 0.5m/pixel maps of nearly the entire lunar surface. All from a SINGLE PROBE. Talk about bang for the buck!
Pfah. I want maps of the lunar surface so clear that we can see the GROOVES in footprints from Shepollo 11-17.
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
Yeah for that you're gonna have to haul a 50 tonne space telescope to lunar orbit
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
Sarevok wrote:Unbelievable. It is hard to imagine reflected light alone being so hot as requiring a ceramic heat shield. The universe is a fascinating place.
No, the shield is directed towards the sun ; Reflected IR is handled by extending the orbit to an egg-shape, with the apoapsis very high, thus allowing the spacecraft some time to dissipate the heat from lower passes.
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
PeZook wrote:Yeah for that you're gonna have to haul a 50 tonne space telescope to lunar orbit
Naw. LROS is orbiting at 47 km to get those photographs of the Apollo sites at 0.5m/pixel resolution. Bring it down to 15 km altitude; the highest feature on the Moon is 7 km.
"If scientists and inventors who develop disease cures and useful technologies don't get lifetime royalties, I'd like to know what fucking rationale you have for some guy getting lifetime royalties for writing an episode of Full House." - Mike Wong
"The present air situation in the Pacific is entirely the result of fighting a fifth rate air power." - U.S. Navy Memo - 24 July 1944
PeZook wrote:Yeah for that you're gonna have to haul a 50 tonne space telescope to lunar orbit
Naw. LROS is orbiting at 47 km to get those photographs of the Apollo sites at 0.5m/pixel resolution. Bring it down to 15 km altitude; the highest feature on the Moon is 7 km.
Isn't the Moon an oblate spheroid, like the Earth, with the equator "higher" than the poles ? Or at least slightly deformed by the Earth's tidal force ?
If so, I would imagine far less deformation. After all, the moon is rotating only once about its axis every time it goes around the Earth.
Vendetta wrote:Richard Gatling was a pioneer in US national healthcare. On discovering that most soldiers during the American Civil War were dying of disease rather than gunshots, he turned his mind to, rather than providing better sanitary conditions and medical care for troops, creating a machine to make sure they got shot faster.
