I’ve learned from the Bad Astronomy Blog that MESSENGER – NASA’s mission to Mercury – will make a flyby of the first planet from the sun today! This is cool. There seem to have been a lot of high profile space exploration to the outer planets, so it’s interesting to see them heading closer to the sun.
MESSENGER means MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, Geochemistry, and Ranging. The official MESSENGER website has all the details for the mission, including a countdown until the time for the closest approach of the flyby. There’s also a countdown for when MESSENGER goes into orbit around Mercury starting on March 18, 2011.
Panorama of the Mountains 
MetaFilter covers the mission. Here I learned that the last spacecraft to visit Mercury was in 1975 which would explain why I don’t remember it happening before.
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I’m glad NASA hasn’t completely given up on the other planets as it concentrates on going to Mars by 2030. I can see that Mars is really important, but it’s also pretty interesting to explore the other planets too.
Hopefully Messenger will deliver some fascinating results – the amount technology has changed since the last probe there in means it should get some interesting results. Though I doubt any mission could be as interesting as Cassini-Huygens, the Satirn probe.
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MESSENGER also to make a fly-by of Canada.
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MESSENGER on The Big Picture
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