Author Topic: NASA- MESSENGER updates  (Read 149381 times)

Offline racshot65

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #340 on: 08/20/2012 03:40 pm »

Offline racshot65

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #341 on: 08/21/2012 04:05 pm »

Offline racshot65

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #342 on: 08/22/2012 08:07 pm »

Offline racshot65

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #343 on: 08/24/2012 05:04 pm »

Offline racshot65

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #344 on: 08/27/2012 01:34 pm »

Offline racshot65

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #345 on: 08/28/2012 01:19 pm »

Offline racshot65

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #346 on: 08/29/2012 01:08 pm »

Offline racshot65

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #347 on: 08/30/2012 03:11 pm »

Online jacqmans

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #348 on: 11/26/2012 06:36 pm »
MEDIA ADVISORY: M12-219

NASA HOSTS NOV. 29 NEWS CONFERENCE ABOUT MERCURY POLAR REGIONS

WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on
Thursday, Nov, 29, to reveal new observations from the first
spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury. The briefing will be held in
the NASA Headquarters auditorium, located at 300 E St. SW in
Washington.

Science Journal has embargoed details until 2 p.m. on Nov. 29. The
news conference will be carried live on NASA Television and the
agency's website.

NASA's Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging,
or MESSENGER spacecraft has been studying Mercury in unprecedented
detail since its historic arrival there in March 2011.

The news conference participants are:

-     Jim Green, director, Planetary Science Division, NASA
Headquarters, Washington
-     Sean Solomon, MESSENGER Principal Investigator, Lamont-Doherty
Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, N.Y.
-     David Lawrence, MESSENGER Participating Scientist, The Johns
Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.
-     Gregory Neumann, Mercury Laser Altimeter Instrument Scientist,
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
-     David Paige, MESSENGER Participating Scientist, University of
California, Los Angeles

Journalists may attend the briefing in-person, ask questions from
participating NASA locations and join by phone or via Twitter using
the hashtag #askNASA.

For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and schedule information, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about NASA's MESSENGER mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/messenger
Jacques :-)

Offline JimO

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #349 on: 11/26/2012 07:27 pm »
is it ice?

Whether or not there are trapped volatiles, some of those shaded craters are thought to be colder than Pluto.

This may be a real treat!

Offline Star One

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #350 on: 11/29/2012 06:18 pm »
Yes it is ice.

Quote
The ice — whose long-suspected presence1 has now been confirmed by NASA's orbiting MESSENGER probe — seems to be much purer than ice inside similar craters on Earth's Moon, suggesting that the closest planet to the Sun could be a better trap for icy materials delivered by comets and asteroids.

http://www.nature.com/news/stores-of-ice-confirmed-on-sun-scorched-mercury-1.11922


Online jacqmans

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #351 on: 11/29/2012 06:31 pm »
RELEASE: 12-411

NASA SPACECRAFT FINDS NEW EVIDENCE FOR WATER ICE ON MERCURY

WASHINGTON -- A NASA spacecraft studying Mercury has provided
compelling support for the long-held hypothesis the planet harbors
abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials within its
permanently shadowed polar craters.

The new information comes from NASA's MErcury Surface, Space
ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft. Its
onboard instruments have been studying Mercury in unprecedented
detail since its historic arrival there in March 2011. Scientists are
seeing clearly for the first time a chapter in the story of how the
inner planets, including Earth, acquired their water and some of the
chemical building blocks for life.

"The new data indicate the water ice in Mercury's polar regions, if
spread over an area the size of Washington, D.C., would be more than
2 miles thick," said David Lawrence, a MESSENGER participating
scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
(APL) in Laurel, Md., and lead author of one of three papers
describing the findings. The papers were published online in
Thursday's edition of Science Express.

Spacecraft instruments completed the first measurements of excess
hydrogen at Mercury's north pole, made the first measurements of the
reflectivity of Mercury's polar deposits at near-infrared
wavelengths, and enabled the first detailed models of the surface and
near-surface temperatures of Mercury's north polar regions.

Given its proximity to the sun, Mercury would seem to be an unlikely
place to find ice. However, the tilt of Mercury's rotational axis is
less than 1 degree, and as a result, there are pockets at the
planet's poles that never see sunlight.

Scientists suggested decades ago there might be water ice and other
frozen volatiles trapped at Mercury's poles. The idea received a
boost in 1991 when the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico
detected radar-bright patches at Mercury's poles. Many of these
patches corresponded to the locations of large impact craters mapped
by NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft in the 1970s. However, because
Mariner saw less than 50 percent of the planet, planetary scientists
lacked a complete diagram of the poles to compare with the radar
images.

Images from the spacecraft taken in 2011 and earlier this year
confirmed all radar-bright features at Mercury's north and south
poles lie within shadowed regions on the planet's surface. These
findings are consistent with the water ice hypothesis.

The new observations from MESSENGER support the idea that ice is the
major constituent of Mercury's north polar deposits. These
measurements also reveal ice is exposed at the surface in the coldest
of those deposits, but buried beneath unusually dark material across
most of the deposits. In the areas where ice is buried, temperatures
at the surface are slightly too warm for ice to be stable.

MESSENGER's neutron spectrometer provides a measure of average
hydrogen concentrations within Mercury's radar-bright regions. Water
ice concentrations are derived from the hydrogen measurements.

"We estimate from our neutron measurements the water ice lies beneath
a layer that has much less hydrogen. The surface layer is between 10
and 20 centimeters [4-8 inches] thick," Lawrence said.

Additional data from detailed topography maps compiled by the
spacecraft corroborate the radar results and neutron measurements of
Mercury's polar region. In a second paper by Gregory Neumann of
NASA's Goddard Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., measurements of the
shadowed north polar regions reveal irregular dark and bright
deposits at near-infrared wavelength near Mercury's north pole.

"Nobody had seen these dark regions on Mercury before, so they were
mysterious at first," Neumann said.

The spacecraft recorded dark patches with diminished reflectance,
consistent with the theory that ice in those areas is covered by a
thermally insulating layer. Neumann suggests impacts of comets or
volatile-rich asteroids could have provided both the dark and bright
deposits, a finding corroborated in a third paper led by David Paige
of the University of California at Los Angeles.

"The dark material is likely a mix of complex organic compounds
delivered to Mercury by the impacts of comets and volatile-rich
asteroids, the same objects that likely delivered water to the
innermost planet," Paige said.

This dark insulating material is a new wrinkle to the story, according
to MESSENGER principal investigator Sean Solomon of Columbia
University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y.

"For more than 20 years, the jury has been deliberating whether the
planet closest to the sun hosts abundant water ice in its permanently
shadowed polar regions," Solomon said. "MESSENGER now has supplied a
unanimous affirmative verdict."

MESSENGER was designed and built by APL. The lab manages and operates
the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The
mission is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed for the
directorate by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in
Huntsville, Ala.

For more information about the Mercury mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/messenger

Jacques :-)

Offline John44

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #352 on: 11/29/2012 08:19 pm »

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #353 on: 11/30/2012 01:52 am »
Yes it is ice.

Quote
The ice — whose long-suspected presence1 has now been confirmed by NASA's orbiting MESSENGER probe — seems to be much purer than ice inside similar craters on Earth's Moon, suggesting that the closest planet to the Sun could be a better trap for icy materials delivered by comets and asteroids.

http://www.nature.com/news/stores-of-ice-confirmed-on-sun-scorched-mercury-1.11922



Fantastic.

Always good to know where you can fill up your canteen. :)

Offline catdlr

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #354 on: 11/30/2012 04:19 am »
News feature: 2012-378                                                                    Nov. 29, 2012

NASA Spacecraft Finds New Evidence for Water Ice on Mercury

 

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-378&cid=release_2012-378

PASADENA, Calif. -- Instruments aboard NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft studying the planet Mercury have provided compelling support for the long-held hypothesis the planet harbors abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials within its permanently shadowed polar craters.

"About the last thing you would expect on a planet so close to the sun is water ice," said Matthew Siegler, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and an author on one of three papers published today in Science Express. "But due to Mercury's low tilt, craters near the poles can remain in year-round shadow and be ridiculously cold."

Scientists suggested decades ago there might be water ice and other frozen volatiles trapped at Mercury's poles. The idea received a boost in 1991 when the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico detected radar-bright patches at Mercury's poles. Many of these patches corresponded to the locations of large impact craters mapped by NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft in the 1970s. However, because Mariner saw less than 50 percent of the planet, planetary scientists lacked a complete diagram of the poles to compare with the radar images.

Images taken from MESSENGER in 2011, and earlier this year, confirmed all radar-bright features at Mercury's north and south poles lie within shadowed regions on the planet's surface. These findings are consistent with the water ice hypothesis.

"The new data indicate the water ice in Mercury's polar regions, if spread over an area the size of Washington, D.C., would be more than 2 miles thick," said David Lawrence, a MESSENGER participating scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., lead author of one of the three papers describing the findings.

The new observations from MESSENGER support the idea that ice is the major constituent of Mercury's north polar deposits. These measurements also reveal ice is exposed at the surface in the coldest of those deposits, but buried beneath unusually dark material across most of the deposits. In the areas where ice is buried, temperatures at the surface are slightly too warm for ice to be stable.

"Everywhere on Mercury we predict it's cold enough that there could be ice, Messenger finds bright deposits," said Siegler. "Where it is slightly warmer, and where ice should only be stable underground, we find a dark material, darker than anything else we've seen on Mercury."

The dark material is likely a mix of complex organic compounds delivered to Mercury by the impacts of comets and volatile-rich asteroids, the same objects that likely delivered water to the innermost planet.

A composite image of the discovery is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/multimedia/PressConf20121126_2.html

MESSENGER was designed and built by the Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md. The lab manages and operates the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed for the directorate by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
[email protected]
818-393-9011

2012-378

- end -
Tony De La Rosa, ...I'm no Feline Dealer!! I move mountains.  but I'm better known for "I think it's highly sexual." Japanese to English Translation.

Offline rusty

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #355 on: 03/08/2014 12:05 pm »
Some fundamental relativity and quantum theory questions I recently eluded to in another thread;

What is the time dilation aboard Messenger (how fast its clock ticks) compared with before launch?
Has its communication frequency been altered with proximity to the Sun's gravitational well?
Are spectrographic observations (red/blue shift) of the Sun or stars different than those near Earth?

-- Are any of these questions answerable and could/will the information become available? Thank you.

Offline catdlr

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #356 on: 08/01/2014 07:49 pm »
MESSENGER Flies Over Mercury

Published on Aug 1, 2014
NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft captured this video during a flyover of Mercury's north pole on June 8, 2014.

Tony De La Rosa, ...I'm no Feline Dealer!! I move mountains.  but I'm better known for "I think it's highly sexual." Japanese to English Translation.

Offline veblen

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #357 on: 10/15/2014 09:30 pm »
Mercury ice younger than lunar ice? Estimate of ice at Mercury's poles comparable in volume to water in Lake Ontario.


http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/content/early/2014/10/14/G35916.1.full.pdf+html?ijkey=rxQlFflgdo/rY&keytype=ref&siteid=gsgeology



 

Offline catdlr

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #358 on: 04/14/2015 02:02 pm »
NASA to Celebrate MESSENGER Mission Prior to Surface Impact of Mercury

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/april/nasa-to-celebrate-messenger-mission-prior-to-surface-impact-of-mercury/

April 13, 2015
MEDIA ADVISORY M15-059

NASA will hold a media and public event at 1 p.m. EDT on Thursday, April 16, to share scientific findings and technical accomplishments of the agency’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft.

After more than 10 years in space, the highly successful mission will come to an end when it is expected to collide into Mercury at a speed of more than 8,750 miles per hour (3.91 km/sec) near the end of this month.
The event will take place in the NASA Headquarters' James E. Webb Auditorium, 300 E Street, S.W., Washington, and will be carried live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

Launched in August 2004, MESSENGER traveled 4.9 billion miles (7.9 billion kilometers) - a journey that included 15 trips around the sun and flybys of Earth once, Venus twice, and Mercury three times - before it was inserted into orbit around its target planet in March 2011. The spacecraft's cameras and other sophisticated, high-technology instruments have collected unprecedented images and made other observations. Mission managers are preparing to impact Mercury’ surface in the next couple weeks.

Participants will include:
 
James Green, director, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington

Sean Solomon, MESSENGER principal investigator; director, Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, New York

Helene Winters, MESSENGER project manager, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland

Daniel O’Shaughnessy, MESSENGER systems engineer, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland

To participate by phone, reporters must contact Dwayne Brown at 202-358-1726 or [email protected] and provide their media affiliation no later than noon Thursday April 16. Media and the public also may ask questions during the event via Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA.

For NASA TV streaming video, schedules and downlink information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

For more information about the mission, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/messenger
-end-

Artist concept of the MESSENGER spacecraft in orbit around planet Mercury.
Image Credit: NASA
Tony De La Rosa, ...I'm no Feline Dealer!! I move mountains.  but I'm better known for "I think it's highly sexual." Japanese to English Translation.

Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: NASA- MESSENGER updates
« Reply #359 on: 04/14/2015 03:18 pm »
After more than 10 years in space, the highly successful mission will come to an end when it is expected to collide into Mercury at a speed of more than 8,750 miles per hour (3.91 km/sec) near the end of this month.

The event will take place in the NASA Headquarters' James E. Webb Auditorium, 300 E Street, S.W., Washington, and will be carried live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

Two thoughts:

First -- remind me to stay well away from E Street on that day -- I want to be well clear of any ejecta from the impact!

Second -- is there any way we can invite certain select members of Congress to this event?

:D  :D  :D
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

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