Messenger (Даёшь Меркурий!)

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Сложно спутнику задержаться на орбите Меркурия.....

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MESSENGER Images Debut on "The Big Bang Theory"

Tonight, images from MESSENGER's Mercury Dual Imaging System will make their debut on the CBS sitcom, "The Big Bang Theory." The award-winning comedy centers on five characters: roommates Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter, two physicists who work at the California Institute of Technology; and Sheldon's and Leonard's equally geeky and socially awkward friends and co-workers, aerospace engineer Howard Wolowitz and astrophysicist Rajesh Koothrappali; and Penny, a blonde waitress and aspiring actress who lives across the hall.

Much of the show focuses on science, particularly physics. The characters frequently banter about scientific theories or news and make science-related jokes.

"The MESSENGER team is thrilled by the decision of the producers and writers of 'The Big Bang Theory' to weave some of the spacecraft's latest images of Mercury into this week's episode," says MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "We look forward to seeing how the images figure in the story line and camera shots, and we hope that interest in the MESSENGER mission is broadened by this exposure on one of the most popular series now on television."

MESSENGER's images will appear in an episode entitled, The Hawking Excitation. When Wolowitz gets to work with Stephen Hawking, Sheldon is willing to do anything to meet his hero. The show airs tonight at 8:00 p.m. EDT on CBS!

Engineer Keeps MESSENGER Software Grounded in Quality

Eric Melin's interest in engineering and science was sparked by his father and mother, who worked as a chemical engineer and a chemist, respectively. But it was the technological leap in computer processing in the early 1990s that propelled him into the field of software development. As MESSENGER's lead ground software engineer, Melin overseas the spacecraft's command and telemetry. Read more about his critical role on the mission here.

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=210

[ОАЯ]

надо туда посадочный модуль отправить.

Легко.

[Чебурашка]

Ага... Так уж и легко.
В притык к возможностям "Atlas-5" в самой тяжёлой конфигурации 551. И то с извращениями, типа многоступенчатой посадки.

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MESSENGER Adjusts Orbit for a Closer Look at Mercury

The MESSENGER mission successfully completed the first of two maneuvers designed to reduce the spacecraft's orbital period about Mercury. This new trajectory will pave the way for more detailed measurements and targeted observations of the Sun's closest neighbor.

The spacecraft was 124 million kilometers (77 million miles) from Earth when the 188-second maneuver began at 3:13 p.m. EDT. Mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., verified the start of the maneuver 6 minutes and 53 seconds later, when the first signals indicating spacecraft thruster activity reached NASA's Deep Space Network tracking station in Goldstone, Calif.

This maneuver -- which adjusted the orbital period from 11 hours, 36 minutes to 9 hours, 5 minutes -- was designed to deplete the remaining oxidizer of the spacecraft's propulsion system in a final firing of the large bi-propellant thruster. A second maneuver, scheduled for the evening of April 20, will use the spacecraft's monopropellant system to complete the transition to an 8-hour orbit.

The strategy to complete this transition involves the execution by the MESSENGER flight team of carefully planned command sequences, says MESSENGER Mission Design Lead James McAdams of APL. "The first orbit-correction maneuver consumed the remaining oxidizer, which is one of two propellants used for the higher-efficiency large thruster," he explains. Although such an "oxidizer depletion" maneuver is not uncommon, new procedures had to be developed and tested to make this MESSENGER critical event possible and safe to perform.

After Friday's maneuver, the 8-hour orbit will remain highly eccentric, with MESSENGER travelling between 278 kilometers (172 miles) and 10,314 kilometers (6,409 miles) above Mercury's surface. Reducing the orbital period will increase from two to three the number of revolutions the spacecraft will make about the planet each day, increasing the time that the spacecraft will spend closer to the surface, says MESSENGER Mission Systems Engineer Eric Finnegan, of APL.

The additional time at lower altitude, he says, will enhance the science return. It will amplify the effectiveness of the high-energy spectrometers used to determine the composition of the planet's surface and will increase the number of altitude profiles that the laser altimeter will be able to make in the northern hemisphere of the planet, allowing for more detailed topographic maps. Operations at this lower altitude will also enable higher-resolution imaging of Mercury's southern hemisphere.

"The MESSENGER engineering and operations teams have once again made a critical maneuver look easy," says MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean C. Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "The Science Team is now looking forward to being able to address a host of scientific questions on the composition, geological evolution, and environment of Mercury that have been raised by earlier orbital observations. With our new orbit, it feels as though we're embarking on a new mission."

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=214

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MESSENGER Settles into Eight-Hour Orbit Around Mercury, Poised for New Discoveries

MESSENGER mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., conducted the second of two maneuvers required to reduce the spacecraft's orbital period about Mercury. The first maneuver, completed on Monday, shortened the orbital period from 11.6 to 9.1 hours and consumed the remaining oxidizer, one of two propellants that fuel the higher-efficiency large thruster. With today's maneuver, accomplished with the spacecraft's four medium-sized thrusters, MESSENGER is now in the 8-hour orbit from which it will operate for the next year.

MESSENGER was 133 million kilometers (83 million miles) from Earth when the 4-minute maneuver began at 7:05 p.m. EDT. Mission controllers at APL verified the start of the maneuver 7 minutes and 23 seconds later, after the first signals indicating spacecraft thruster activity reached NASA's Deep Space Network tracking station in Canberra, Australia.

The shorter orbit will allow MESSENGER's science team to address new questions about Mercury's composition, geological evolution, and environment that were raised by discoveries made during the first year of orbital operations.

"For instance," says APL's Patrick Peplowski, "during the first year of orbital operations, MESSENGER's Gamma-Ray Spectrometer and X-Ray Spectrometer provided the first measurements of the abundances of many elements on Mercury's surface, including magnesium, sulfur, calcium, and potassium. The eight-hour orbit gives us more observing time at low altitudes, which will permit measurements of variations in surface composition on shorter spatial scales. Such information will give us new insight into the chemical and geological processes by which Mercury's crust was formed."

An animation of the maneuvers that guided MESSENGER into its new orbit is available online at .

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=218

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Dr. Seuss, Alvin Ailey among the Names Selected for 23 Mercury Craters

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) recently approved a proposal from the MESSENGER Science Team to assign 23 new names to impact craters on Mercury. The IAU has been the arbiter of planetary and satellite nomenclature since its inception in 1919. In keeping with the established naming theme for craters on Mercury, all of the newly designated features are named after famous deceased artists, musicians, or authors.

The newly named craters include:

    * Ailey, for Alvin Ailey 1931-1989), an American choreographer credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African-American participation in 20th century concert dance.

    * Aksakov, for Sergey Aksakov (1791-1859), a 19th-century Russian literary figure remembered for his semi-autobiographical tales of family life, as well as for his books on hunting and fishing.

    * Balanchine, for George Balanchine (1904-1983), one of the 20th century's most famous choreographers, a developer of ballet in the United States and the co-founder and ballet master of New York City Ballet; he wrote more than 400 ballets.

    * Ellington, for Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (1899-1974), an American composer, pianist, and big-band leader who, over the course of a 50-year career, wrote more than 1,000 compositions. A major figure in the history of jazz, he also wrote music that stretched into other genres, including blues, gospel, film scores, popular, and classical.

    * Faulkner, for William Faulkner (1897-1962), considered one of the most important writers of U.S. Southern literature. A Nobel Prize laureate, he worked in a variety of media but is best known for his novels and short stories.

    * Fonteyn, for Margot Fonteyn (1919-1991), an English ballerina regarded as one of the greatest classical ballet dancers of all time. She spent her entire career as a dancer with the Royal Ballet, eventually being appointed Prima Ballerina Assoluta of the company by Queen Elizabeth II.

    * Grainger, for Percy Grainger (1882-1961), an Australian-born composer, arranger, and pianist who, during the course of a 65-year career, played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century.

    * Grotell, for Maija Grotell (1899-1973), a Finland-born ceramist and teacher known for her experiments in glaze technology and sometimes described as the "mother of American ceramics."

    * Henri, for Robert Henri (1865-1929), an American painter and teacher. He was a leading figure of the Ashcan School, an early 20th century artistic movement best known for works portraying scenes of daily life in New York's poorer neighborhoods.

    * Holst, for Gustav Theodore Holst (1874-1934), an English composer most famous for his orchestral suite, The Planets.

    * Kofi, for Vincent Akwete Kofi (1923-1974), a Ghanaian sculptor who borrowed extensively from traditional African concepts of stylization, emphasis, distortion and symbolism.

    * Lismer, for Arthur Lismer (1885-1969), a Canadian painter and member of the Group of Seven, a team of artists famous for its paintings inspired by the Canadian landscape and for initiating the first major Canadian national art movement.

    * Magritte, for Ren

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MESSENGER's Cameras Capture 100,000 'th Image from Mercury Orbit[/size]

This week, MESSENGER's Mercury Dual Imaging System delivered the 100,000th image of Mercury since the spacecraft entered into orbit around the planet on March 18, 2011. The instrument — one of seven aboard the spacecraft — has globally mapped the planet in high-resolution monochrome images and in color images through eight of its color filters, uncovering a new view of Mercury and shedding light on the planet's geologic history.

"That our inventory of orbital images of Mercury is now expressed in six figures constitutes an important footnote in the history of solar system exploration," offers MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "The MESSENGER mission has at last provided us a view of the innermost planet that is fully global, multispectral, and at a range of illumination conditions. Moreover, we are steadily building a library of targeted high-resolution images that allow us to view features and discern geological processes in unprecedented detail."

Because of Mercury's proximity to the Sun and its slow rotation, designing an imaging system for an orbital mission presented quite a challenge, says MDIS Instrument Engineer Ed Hawkins of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md.

"The sunshade protects the spacecraft from direct solar illumination, but we knew it would constrain a camera's range of pointing," Hawkins says. "So, we had to come up with a system that would be able to capture the required observations of the planet, maintain the thermal safety requirements and not jeopardize the safety of the spacecraft.

"We finally came up with the idea for a pivoting mechanism that gave the instrument an extra degree of freedom, allowing it to obtain extra observations even when the spacecraft — and the rest of the instruments — were facing away from the planet."

The system has exceeded the team's expectations, he says. "We obtained images of Earth and Venus, but those were primarily to test the instrument. We used fairly simple spacecraft pointing options and exercised basic MDIS exposure control and compression options," he says. But the instrument's performance during the first flyby of Mercury in January 2008 was the first demonstration of the instrument's full capabilities.

"When we received that first image after the first flyby, it confirmed for us that the imaging system we designed was working, and since then the camera has been operating flawlessly," he says.

Nori Laslo, MESSENGER's Deputy Payload Operations Manager and MDIS Instrument Sequencer, says she can remember when this point "still seemed eons away.

"To have now successfully completed our primary mission, entered our extended mission, and surpassed 100,000 images is spectacular and really speaks to the ability of the MESSENGER team to work as a unit to tackle from all sides whatever challenges are encountered," says Laslo of APL. "The team is made up of people with many different backgrounds, including engineers, scientists, analysts, sequencers, flight controllers, software developers, information technology specialists, managers, and administrative support, among others. Everyone brings different expertise and insight to the table. So the milestone of 100,000 images from orbit is really a group achievement, a product of our combined efforts to make the MESSENGER mission a success."

The 100,000 images from Mercury's orbit constitute an important milestone, says MDIS Instrument Scientist Nancy Chabot, of APL. But there is still much more to come. "New images are returned from Mercury orbit on nearly a daily basis, and scientists around the world are studying these images to decipher Mercury's history and evolution."

Track the MESSENGER mission as MDIS begins to acquire the next 100,000 images from Mercury orbit by going online http://messenger.jhuapl.edu or downloading the MESSENGER app.

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=220

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MESSENGER Gains Deputy Principal Investigator

Vancouver, B.C. -- Larry Nittler, a staff scientist in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, has been named deputy principal investigator of the MESSENGER mission. MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon, of CIW, delivered the announcement this morning at the first plenary of the 26th meeting of the MESSENGER Science Team meeting in Vancouver, B.C.

Solomon, a research scientist and director emeritus at CIW, has led NASA's orbiting exploration of the planet Mercury since its inception. In July, he will assume the directorship of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Nittler received a bachelor's degree in Physics from Cornell University in 1991, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Washington University in 1996. After a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at CIW, he took a position as an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, where he worked on the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission to the asteroid 433 Eros. His analysis of NEAR measurements helped provide the first chemical analyses of a minor planet.

Nittler returned to Carnegie as a staff scientist in 2001. In addition to remote-sensing geochemical measurements, his research focuses on the laboratory study of extraterrestrial materials, including meteorites and interplanetary dust particles, to understand the formation of the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe and to identify the materials involved. In particular, he has led investigations of the analysis of samples returned by NASA's Stardust and Genesis missions.

"I'm delighted that Larry has agreed to shoulder new responsibilities for the MESSENGER mission," says Solomon. "He's been a Participating Scientist on MESSENGER for the past five years, he's served as deputy chair of the Science Team's Geochemistry Discipline Group for the past four, and he is leading the analysis of X-Ray Spectrometer observations of Mercury's surface composition. That he is now taking on a still larger role will enable a smooth transition in the partitioning of mission management tasks even as I assume additional duties in a new position."

"I'm honored and excited to take on this expanded role in MESSENGER," says Nittler. "It's a wonderful opportunity to help ensure the continued success of a ground-breaking planetary mission."

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=222

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Разрешение фото 17 метров на пиксель:

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Разрешение фото 17 метров на пиксель:

Вулкан?

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Вулкан?

Кратер, недавно получивший имя.

[Dmitri]

Странно, сколько усилий направлено к никому не нужному,мертвому и раскаленному как свечка Меркурию вместо опасных для этого сайта астероидов, которые уничтожили всеми любимых динозавров.

[sol]

Вулкан?

Кратер, недавно получивший имя.

Плато Путорана типа

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Магнитные вихри Меркурия оказались большими и важными

К списку космических ужасов можете смело добавлять гигантские магнитные вихри.

Огромные завитки на краю магнитосферы Меркурия — там, где магнитное поле планеты встречает заряженные частицы солнечного ветра, — приводят к тому, что на планету обрушиваются дополнительные потоки солнечной плазмы.

Волны Кельвина — Гельмгольца возникают на границе двух жидкостей — например, двух воздушных масс в атмосфере Земли. С поверхности нашей планеты они выглядят странными волнообразными облаками. Эти волны могут также образовываться в магнитосфере некоторых планет; как показал американский космический аппарат MESSENGER, не миновали они и Меркурий.

Новое изучение данных зонда показало, что волны в действительности больше, чем считалось: они превосходят земные аналоги в два–три раза и возникают в 10–30 раз чаще.

MESSENGER обнаружил также связь между солнечной плазмой в магнитосфере Меркурия с волнами Кельвина — Гельмгольца. Это говорит о том, что крупные волны направляют плазму к планете. «Они играют более важную роль в переносе массы и энергии, чем мы думали», — поясняет Торбьёрн Сундберг из Центра космических полётов НАСА им. Годдарда.

http://science.compulenta.ru/681096/
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21832-magnetic-space-whirlpools-give-mercury-a-plasma-shower.html
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2011JA017268.shtml

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MESSENGER Measures Waves at the Boundary of Mercury's Magnetosphere
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=223

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Tyagaraja, and Zeami, and Sophocles! Oh My!
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=859

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Опрос программы Русский космос. Планета Меркурий

"Русский космос" готовит очередной выпуск программы, посвященный самой близкой к Солнцу планете Солнечной системы - Меркурию.

Съемочная группа "Русского космоса" провела опрос на улицах Москвы о том, что жители и гости города знают о планете Меркурий, а также о необходимости изучать его землянами.
Выпуск программы "Русский космос" о планете Меркурии планируется на 9 июня 2012 года.

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Программа Русский космос 18

Самая маленькая планета в Солнечной системе сравнительно мало изучена космическими аппаратами. Первую полную карту поверхности Меркурия удалось составить лишь в 2009 году.
В 2015 году к ближайшей к Солнцу планете стартует экспедиция Европейского космического агентства "БепиКоломбо", одной из задач которой станет поиск водяного льда на полюсах Меркурия.
Для решения этой задачи в Институте космических исследований (ИКИ) РАН был разработан прибор МГНС (Меркурианский нейтронный и гамма-спектрометр), который будет установлен на борту "БепиКоломбо".
О том, чем еще привлекает учёных Меркурий, в эфире "Русского космоса" рассказал Максим Литвак, ведущий научный сотрудник лаборатории космической гамма-спектроскопии Института космических исследований РАН.