Messenger and Mercury exploration

From NASA's Messenger Site:

"The MESSENGER spacecraft lifted off on-time aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket from pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., at 2:15:56.537 a.m. EDT. MESSENGER has successfully begun its mission to unravel the mysteries of planet Mercury.

MESSENGER is a scientific investigation of the planet Mercury. Understanding Mercury, and the forces that have shaped it, is fundamental to understanding the terrestrial planets and their evolution. Just what is a terrestrial planet? It is a group of planets that are like Earth.

The MESSENGER spacecraft will orbit Mercury following three flybys of that planet. The orbital phase will use the flyby information as an initial guide to perform a focused scientific investigation of this mysterious world.

MESSENGER will enter Mercury orbit in March 2011 and carry out comprehensive measurements for one Earth year. The data-collection phase of the mission will conclude in March 2012."

All I can say is: It's about time.

Weather is finally calming down a bit here... We are getting showers on and off all day as opposed to a 4 day torrential downpour that we had before.

Hurrah! MESSENGER is heading to the best beach this side of the Solar System. Don't forget the sunblock and beach umbrella!

haha, and something to do for the insanely long car ride there... "Are we there yet?!"

Heh... You can always count the out-of-state license plates..... "Oh, look, there's one from Rigel! Ooh, and another from Alpha Centauri!"

Seriously, though: a live cam feed from Mercury of a CME..... Wow. Just wow. Not like the camera would last more than a few milliseconds (much less the transmission)......

I could not find anything about a Swedish opposition. On the contrary, the Swedish plan to do it with an own probe:
Take a look at : http://www.solstation.com/stars/venus.htm


Some time ago there was also some other info on Venus on http://www.ssc.se/ but they seemed to have cleaned it up, just like the data on the Phoenix project (a mini-shuttle) .

Sorry eraurocktchick87, I misread your previous entry. The Swedish are indeed supposed to launch such a mission.

It's all good *twiddles thumbs waiting for the 6 year car ride to end*

Wanna play cards? I brought some movies, too... I hope you have the TV and DVD player.

Would be good if MESSENGER comes with a PS/2/NES emu and some ROMS and digital cable.

Digital cable? Maybe some well positioned satellite TV Lets play war, that card game will take up the entire trip to Mercury and back