Cummins Family - MESSENGER and Mercury

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August 03, 2004

MESSENGER and Mercury

Did you know that today at 2:15 the space probe MESSENGER was sent to mercury?

I think that it's amazing that we can send a probe to a planet that's millions of miles away, and then have it endure the heat of the sun, which will be less than 30 million miles away. MESSENGER won't be the first probe to go to mercury, Mariner 10 is the only probe to successfully reach and study mercury. Thing about Mariner 10, to me it was an almost worthless venture because we (NASA, the general public) learned very little about mercury.

Mercury, even with the little information that we know about is very interesting to me. Mercury is very different than the other planets in our solar system, even though it's not my favorite planet, mercury does peak my interest because of its many mysteries. Mercury, small as it is has an iron core that takes up approximately 65% of the planets' mass, and also that Mercury's days are longer than its years'.

What I'm wondering now is how does NASA know that this mission will be a success?

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Posted by Danny at August 3, 2004 04:16 PM

Comment: Danny wrote: "What I'm wondering now is how does NASA know that this mission will be a success?" I think that John F. Kennedy answered a similar question that bears mentioning. "...but why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." We may not have learned much about Mercury itself when we launched Mariner 10, but we learned a lot about building and launching probes towards the heart of our solar system. The mission was a success, and we gained much from it. How does NASA know that this mission will be a success? They do not. No one knows the result of effort until they apply it, and no one can better themselves without effort. The trick is to choose when and where you will apply your effort to achieve the maximum results. The aptly named "Messenger" is on its way to Mercury, the closest planet to our sun and named for the fleet-footed messenger of the gods. Who knows how it will turn out? Even if the mission fails, I am sure that we will learn a great deal from it.

Posted by: Michael Cummins at August 3, 2004 06:10 PM

Comment: There are many mysteries left not only on Earth, but also in our solar system, even beyond. Not long ago, I had a rather interesting conversation with a Physics student at the University of Texas, San Antonio regarding the space program. There is still a lot left for us to learn, yet he felt that space exploration will be more of a learning experience once it is privatized. Personally, I think a little privatization of the space program would be a good thing, however governmental regulation would still be necessary for the safety and security of the private citizens who were being hurled beyond the Earth's gravitational pull. Pretty soon, we'll be seeing the new "AOL Shuttle"... AOLIS (AOL In Space) ;-)

Posted by: JP Balzen at August 3, 2004 11:30 PM

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