WASHINGTON, DC, May 4, 2015 (ENS) – NASA’s 10-year-long planetary exploration mission to Mercury came to a planned end Thursday when it slammed into Mercury’s surface at about 8,750 miles per hour, creating a new crater on the planet’s surface.

Mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland confirmed NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft hit the surface of small, hot planet closest to the Sun, as planned, at 3:26 pm EDT.


NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft in orbit around the planet Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun (Photo courtesy NASA)


The MESSENGER spacecraft is the first ever to orbit the planet Mercury. APL built and operated the spacecraft and managed the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.



MESSENGER determined Mercury’s surface composition, revealed its geological history, discovered its internal magnetic field is offset from the planet’s center, and verified its polar deposits are mostly water ice.


Mercury as photographed by MESSENGER. The colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but the colors enhance the chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences between the rocks on Mercury’s surface. (Photo by NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab/Carnegie Institution of Washington)


Just before impact, MESSENGER’s mission design team predicted the spacecraft would pass a few miles over a lava-filled basin on the planet before striking the surface and creating a crater estimated to be 50 feet wide.

MESSENGER’s end was unobserved because the craft hit the side of the planet facing away from Earth, so ground-based telescopes were not able to capture the moment of impact.

Space-based telescopes were unable to view the impact, as Mercury’s proximity to the Sun would damage their optics.


MESSENGER was launched on August 3, 2004, and began orbiting Mercury on March 17, 2011.

Although it completed its primary science objectives by March 2012, the spacecraft’s mission was extended twice, allowing it to capture images and information about the planet.


On Tuesday, the team executed the last of seven orbit correction maneuvers that kept MESSENGER aloft long enough for the spacecraft’s instruments to collect critical information on Mercury’s crustal magnetic anomalies and ice-filled polar craters.

After running out of fuel, and with no way to increase its altitude, MESSENGER was finally unable to resist the Sun’s gravitational pull on its orbit.


“A resourceful and committed team of engineers, mission operators, scientists, and managers can be extremely proud that the MESSENGER mission has surpassed all expectations and delivered a stunningly long list of discoveries that have changed our views,” said Solomon, “not only of one of Earth’s sibling planets, but of the entire inner solar system.”
