Fed2 Star - the newsletter for the space trading game Federation 2

The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: May 10, 2015

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REAL LIFE NEWS: FAREWELL TO MESSENGER, THE MERCURY PROBE

by Hazed

The Messenger probe has crash-landed onto the surface of Mercury, ending its successful mission with a bang.

The ship spent ten years in space, four of those orbiting Mercury. It reached the planet in 2011 with an expected mission life of a year, but the mission was extended twice, giving Messenger the chance to send back more than 270,000 images and 10 terabytes of scientific measurements which have transformed our understanding of Mercury.

Amongst its discoveries were the fact that Mercury’s magnetic field is off-centre by about 10% of its diameter. It also found evidence for water on the planet in the polar craters.

When it was almost out of fuel it started to orbit the planet lower and lower, getting as much last minute information as it could, before it finally ran out of juice and crashed into a region near Mercury’s north pole, smashing into the surface at 8,750mph. The impact would have completely obliterated the ship, and blasted a new crater on the planet the size of a tennis court.

Farewell, Messenger!

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32542646

Bonus link: Deliberate crash-landings in the last 50 years: http://gizmodo.com/everything-weve-learned-from-50-years-of-deliberate-s-1702367135/+AnnaleeNewitz

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