After 30+ years, Another look at Mercury

[Mr. Analog]

The Messenger probe recently buzzed Mercury, the planet closest to the sun.

On January 14, 2008, more than three decades after the third Mariner 10 flyby, the last spacecraft visit of Mercury, MESSENGER passed 200 kilometers above Mercury's surface. Extensive scientific observations were executed during this flyby encounter, including imaging a large portion of Mercury's surface that has never before been seen by a spacecraft. Listen to Principal Investigator Sean Solomon discuss the importance of this historic flyby of Mercury during a Planetary Radio show.

Lots of photos and data were collected about Mercury can be found here:
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/mer_flyby1.html

[Thorin]

Cool!  I didn't even know they were planning to put MESSENGER into orbit around Mercury...  1,157 more days before that happens.

Look at the homepage: http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/index.php.  Do you see how fast it's traveling?!  From the FAQ:

12. How far -- and how fast -- will MESSENGER travel?

    Our intrepid spacecraft will have traveled 4.9 billion miles (7.9 billion kilometers) from its launch in summer 2004 until insertion into Mercury orbit in March 2011. During the yearlong Mercury orbital phase of the mission, the probe will travel 22.7 million miles (39.9 million kilometers) around Mercury.

    In the course of its journey to Mercury orbit insertion, MESSENGER?s average speed will be approximately 84,500 miles per hour (nearly 38 kilometers per second) relative to the Sun. MESSENGER's maximum speed relative to the Sun will be about 140,870 mph (nearly 63 km/s).

Yowza!

[Mr. Analog]

What's amazing to me is the quality of data gathered from the instrumentation at those fantastic speeds.