Mercury in the cross hairs
NASA’s ambitious MESSENGER spacecraft will have company by the end of this decade, when the BepiColombo mission reaches the innermost planet.
Published:
February 21, 2011
Planetary scientists can’t seem to get enough of Mercury. The world closest to the Sun didn’t receive any spacecraft visits for 33 years — from the third and final flyby executed by NASA’s Mariner 10 probe in 1975 — until the first MESSENGER flyby in 2008. After two subsequent flybys, MESSENGER became the first craft to orbit Mercury in March 2011.
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