[FPSPACE] FW: MESSENGER Team Begins Planning for Second Mercury Encounter

[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 Begins Planning for Second Mercury Encounter
>Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 08:00:25 -0500
>
>MESSENGER Mission News
>
>February 6, 2008
>
>http://messenger.jhuapl.edu 
><https://owa.jhuapl.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/>
>
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>MESSENGER Team Begins Planning for Second Mercury Encounter
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>Little more than three weeks after MESSENGER's first historic flyby of 
>Mercury, the team this week began mapping out its trajectory and 
>observation plans for the probe's second pass of the planet this fall. On 
>October 6, 2008, at 4:39 a.m. EST, the spacecraft will once again fly 200 
>kilometers (124 miles) above the surface of the planet.
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>This is the second of three scheduled passes of Mercury, each designed to 
>provide a critical gravity assist needed to keep MESSENGER on track for its 
>March 2011 orbit insertion around the planet. As with the first flyby on 
>January 14, 2008, the spacecraft's full suite of instruments will be 
>operating.
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>*	The Mercury Dual Imaging System will gather color observations of 
>Mercury's surface in 11 filters, and its Narrow Angle Camera will image 
>high-resolution monochrome measurements near the equator.
>*	The Magnetometer and the Energetic Particle and Plasma Spectrometer will 
>explore the planet's magnetosphere at low altitude, near Mercury's equator.
>*	The ultraviolet and visible spectrometer on the Mercury Atmospheric and 
>Surface Composition Spectrometer (MASCS) will make observations of chemical 
>species in the exosphere and tail, and the MASCS visible and infrared 
>spectrograph will make spectral measurements of Mercury's surface.
>*	The Neutron Spectrometer will make measurements of the neutron flux that 
>may yield estimates of iron and thallium abundances near MESSENGER's ground 
>track.
>*	The Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) will acquire another topographic 
>profile of Mercury's surface, shedding light on the planet's geographic 
>history.
>*	The X-Ray Spectrometer (XRS) and Gamma-Ray Spectrometer will measure 
>X-ray and gamma-ray emissions from the surface of Mercury and look for 
>characteristic "signatures" in those emissions to determine its elemental 
>composition.
>
>"Observations during this second MESSENGER flyby will almost complete the 
>first high-resolution viewing of Mercury, adding another one-third of the 
>planet surface to the 21% of territory not seen by Mariner 10 and first 
>imaged by MESSENGER in January 2008," says MESSENGER Project Scientist 
>Ralph McNutt. "This second flyby will also provide an important new view of 
>the time-variable exosphere and magnetosphere, adding to our knowledge of 
>how Mercury responds to its variable interplanetary environment as a 
>system."
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>MESSENGER is now approximately 0.35 Astronomical Units (AU) from the Sun (1 
>AU equals 93 million miles) and will reach its next local maximum Sun 
>distance of 0.70 AU at the end of March. Most of the instruments are still 
>on, but they will all be turned off in preparation for the second in-flight 
>main processor software load scheduled for February 27.  The first software 
>load was conducted on October 24, 2005.
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>"This load - planned more than a year ago - will execute the third Deep 
>Space Maneuver on March 19 using new software," explains MESSENGER 
>Operations Manager Andy Calloway. He adds: "In addition to these two top 
>priorities and the second Mercury flyby planning, the team will be focusing 
>on orbital operations with a third 'day in the life' test.  This will be 
>the first test using the latest science planning software and will include 
>orbital eclipse operations along with hot planet fly-over constraints."
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>Meanwhile, MESSENGER's science team is busy analyzing data from the first 
>flyby in preparation for almost two dozen presentations planned to be given 
>at the 39th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in early March.
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>"Our second flyby will occur one and a half Mercury solar days after our 
>first, and as a result the nightside we flew over in January will be in 
>daylight in October," says MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon.  
>"Once again, we will be seeing territory never before viewed at close 
>range.  Three weeks ago we were reminded how many surprises Mercury has in 
>store for us.  We expect to be surprised again this October."
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>Mercury's Geological Architecture
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>As MESSENGER sped by Mercury on January 14, 2008, the Narrow Angle Camera 
>(NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) captured this image 
><http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=160> 
>  before its closest approach with the planet. The scene is near Mercury's 
>terminator (the line between the sunlit day side and dark night side of the 
>planet), where shadows are long and height differences accentuated, 
>revealing rising crater walls that tower over the floors below. The large 
>crater situated on the right side in the bottom half of the image is 
>Sullivan crater, a structure about 135 kilometers (84 miles) in diameter 
>also seen during the Mariner 10 mission. An influential American architect, 
>Louis Sullivan and his work are often associated with the rise of modern 
>skyscrapers, and this crater named in his honor finds a fitting home in 
>Mercury's ancient geological architecture.
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>Additional information and features from MESSENGER's first flyby of Mercury 
>are online at http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/mer_flyby1.html 
><http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/mer_flyby1.html> .
>
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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://www.ciw.edu/> , 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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