Messenger ship is about to fly Mercury

NASA's Aeronautics and Aerospace Agency said that the Mercury probe called Messenger will have the solar system's smallest cross-flight flight early next week, according to AFP. This is the second horizontal Mercury flight of Messenger.

During the first cross-Mercury flight on January 14, 2008, Messenger ship sent to Earth thousands of images and other planetary research data near the Sun.

According to NASA, on Monday (October 6), Messenger will fly 201 km from Mercury and send to Earth about 1,200 images of the planet's surface.

The 1.2-ton Messenger probe is about the size of a car, worth about $ 446 million, launched by NASA on August 3, 2004 in Florida state (USA) under Boeing Delta II rocket. During the six-and-a-half-year journey, the ship will fly an estimated road section of 7.8 billion kilometers.

Although Mercury is only 91 million kilometers from Earth, however, because there is not enough fuel needed to fly a circuit into this solar system's smallest orbit, Messenger has to make many round flights to take advantage of the force. Attractive of Earth, Venus, Sun.

So far, the Messenger ship has flown across the Earth once in August 2005, two times as high as Venus in October 2006 and June 2007. In addition to the first visit to Mercury in February 2008 and the second on October 6, the Messenger also flew near Mercury once on September 29, 2009, before entering the planet's orbit on March 13, 2011 to catch. Early implementation of the mission of exploration within 1 year.

It is known that in 1973, NASA's Mariner 10 probe was launched on Mercury. Mariner 10 flew Mercury 3 times in 1974, 1975 and recorded 45% of the surface of the small planet.