Many poets wrote about universe and its endless beauty, but only few people could really reach it and see it with their own eyes. Man is too conscious not to try anything to reach what no one ever tried before. He is even able to build up spacecraft and fly in it about 5 billion miles to reach his destination. These days NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) wants to get closer to another object of its interest - Mercury. Mercury is the planet known for its closeness to the sun and it is about 48 000 000 miles away from Earth and so it is the nearest planet to the sun. Other facts which scientists already know about Mercury are that this planet is moving around the sun faster than any other planet, and a man can hardly see it from the Earth without using a telescope. Mercury is also extremely dry and hot planet because of the sun which rays on Mercury 7 times as strong as on the Earth. There is no wonder why scientists are so interested in this planet and try to find out as many information as they can. The NASA is constantly working on research of this planet and their efforts have finally achieved success. This success has its name - Messenger. The Messenger is a spacecraft built by Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory which cost $286 million and was launched in 2004. It will make the first flyby to Mercury in three decades; the last one was fulfilled on March 16, 1975 by Mariner 10. Messenger has satellite, which with its 2 442 pounds (more than 1000 kilogram) should move around Mercury three times and then set into orbit. This is expected in 2011. In meantime it will make more than 1200 images, show that side of the planet which was never seen before and also provide other important information about it. Scientists want to understand how Earth, Venus and Mars are formed and what interactions with the sun they have. Satellite should also study composition of Mercury, its interior structure and magnetic field. As the lab's project scientist for the Messenger mission, Ralph McNutt, said, all these dates should arrive on Earth on Tuesday.
Let's see what new we will find out!
By Barbora Misakova; edited by Barbora Krajickova
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