[FPSPACE] FW: MESSENGER TEAM RELEASES FIRST IMAGES FROM VENUS 2 FLYBY

[LARRY KLAES]

>From: MESSENGER News <MESSENGER-News at APLMSG.JHUAPL.EDU>
>Reply-To: MESSENGER News <MESSENGER-News at APLMSG.JHUAPL.EDU>
>To: MESSENGER-ENEWS-L at LISTSERV.JHUAPL.EDU
>Subject: MESSENGER TEAM RELEASES FIRST IMAGES FROM VENUS 2 FLYBY
>Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:23:27 -0400
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>MESSENGER Mission News
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>June 14, 2007
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>http://messenger.jhuapl.edu <http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/>
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>MESSENGER TEAM RELEASES FIRST IMAGES FROM VENUS 2 FLYBY
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>The first images from MESSENGER's second flyby of Venus are in! The
>Mercury-bound probe flew within 338 kilometers (210 miles) of Venus on
>June 5, obtaining a gravity assist that shrank the radius of the probe's
>orbit around the Sun, pulling it closer to Mercury. But the encounter
>also allowed the MESSENGER team to give its two cameras, known as the
>Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), a thorough workout.
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>The MDIS consists of wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras that will map
>landforms, track variations in surface spectra, and gather topographic
>information at Mercury. It snapped a series of images
><http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/multimedia/venus_flyby.html
> >  as it approached Venus.
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>"Venus is enshrouded by a global cloud layer that obscures its surface
>to the MDIS," explains Arizona State University's Mark Robinson, a
>MESSENGER science team member. "This single frame is part of a color
>sequence taken inbound to help us calibrate the wide-angle camera in
>preparation for its first flyby of Mercury next January. Over the next
>several months the camera team will pore over the 614 images taken
>during the Venus 2 encounter to adjust color sensitivity parameters and
>better understand the geometric properties of the instrument."
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>Robinson says that both tasks address two key goals for the instrument
>once the spacecraft gets to Mercury: understanding surface color
>differences and their relation to compositional variations in the crust;
>and ensuring accurate cartographic placement of features on Mercury's
>surface. "Preliminary analysis of the Venus flyby images indicates that
>the cameras are healthy and will be ready for next January's close
>encounter with Mercury," he says.
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>After acquiring hundreds of high-resolution images during close approach
>to Venus, MESSENGER turned its wide-angle camera back to the planet and
>acquired a departure sequence. The first image was taken June 6 at 12:58
>UTC (8:58 p.m. EDT on June 5), and the final image on June 7 at 02:18
>UTC (10:18 p.m. EDT on June 6). During this 25 hour, 20 minute period
>the spacecraft traveled 833,234 kilometers (517,748 miles-more than
>twice the distance from the Earth to the Moon) with respect to Venus at
>an average speed of 9.13 kilometers per second (5.67 miles per second).
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>"These images provide a spectacular good-bye to the cloud-shrouded
>planet while also providing valuable data to the camera calibration
>team," says Robinson.
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>"As a gravity assist and dress rehearsal for Mercury, MESSENGER's Venus
>flyby was a huge success," said MESSENGER principal investigator Sean
>Solomon, from the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "The spacecraft
>hit its aim point to within 1.3 kilometers (0.81 miles), removing the
>need for another trajectory correction in July.  Every instrument
>returned data from the Venus encounter, and the Science Team is hard at
>work analyzing the new observations. We plan to release further data as
>fast as we can."
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>The Venus 2 flyby pictures are online at
>http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/multimedia/venus_flyby.html.
>For more mission news and images, visit http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/.
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>MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and
>Ranging) is a NASA-sponsored scientific investigation of the planet
>Mercury and the first space mission designed to orbit the planet closest
>to the Sun. The MESSENGER spacecraft launched on August 3, 2004, and
>after flybys of Earth, Venus, and Mercury will start a yearlong study of
>its target planet in March 2011. Dr. Sean C. Solomon, of the Carnegie
>Institution of Washington <http://carnegieinstitution.org/> , leads the
>mission as principal investigator. The Johns Hopkins University Applied
>Physics Laboratory <http://www.jhuapl.edu/>  built and operates the
>MESSENGER spacecraft and manages this Discovery
><http://discovery.nasa.gov/> -class mission for NASA
><http://www.nasa.gov/> .
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