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NASA · orbiter ended

MESSENGER

MESSENGER was the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, mapping the whole planet and finding ice in its shadowed polar craters.

Launch
3 August 2004
End of mission
30 April 2015

Trajectory

Trajectory: JPL Horizons vectors (spacecraft -236) every 3 days, projected onto the ecliptic; compressed distance scale.

Mission timeline

  1. Launch on a Delta II from Cape Canaveral
  2. Earth flyby
  3. First Venus flyby
  4. First of three Mercury flybys
  5. First spacecraft to enter orbit around Mercury
  6. Planned impact on Mercury's surface

Targets: Mercury, Venus

About the mission

MESSENGER needed more than six years and six planetary flybys to slow down enough to be captured by Mercury, which it achieved in March 2011. From orbit it mapped the entire surface, found that Mercury is surprisingly rich in volatile elements such as sulphur and potassium, and gathered strong evidence for water ice inside permanently shadowed craters near the north pole. It also measured the planet's lopsided magnetic field. After running out of propellant, it crashed into the surface on 30 April 2015, leaving a new small crater.

Sources