Word: orbiters
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...could collect a better helping of such ancient stuff, that would go a long way toward explaining how the crude materials that constituted the early solar system developed into the discrete planets that exist today. For 27 months of its three-year mission, Genesis trolled through space beyond the orbit of the moon, gathering solar wind on five 4-in. hexagonal collector plates--each coated with silicon, gold, sapphire or diamond--and then stowing them back inside the body of the spacecraft. What's there could be a cosmic treasure: "A billion billion molecules for us to study," says...
...dared go to Mercury only once before, 30 years ago, when Mariner 10 made three flybys. Now NASA is set to try again, with a spacecraft called MESSENGER, which is scheduled to take off as early as this week on a mission to become the first probe to orbit the planet...
MESSENGER will study these and other Mercurian curiosities when it arrives at the planet in 2011. Completing a full orbit in 12 hours and swooping as close as 124 miles to the surface, it will need just six months to photograph the entire globe. After a three-decade wait for a return visit, that ought to seem like no time at all. --By Jeffrey Kluger...
MESSENGER isn't due to enter Mercury's orbit until March 2011. But the probe will be busy all along the way, getting a gravity boost from Earth next year, then Venus twice in an ever tightening spiral toward the first planet from...
...Mariner 10, which saw only half the planet up close during its three flybys. The Hubble Space Telescope has not dared to snap some pictures of its own (training its gaze so close to the sun could fry its electronics) MESSENGER will need just 12 hours to complete an orbit of Mercury. With the planet spinning slowly below, it should be able to survey the entire surface within six months...