MESSENGER is commissioned to investigate the answers to these and other important questions.
MESSENGER is scheduled to stay in orbit at Mercury for one Earthyear, finishing its data collection in March 2012.
The MESSENGERspacecraft is now firmly attached to the third stage of its Delta IIlaunch vehicle in anticipation of the launch window that opens at 2:16 a.m.
Specifically, the scientific objectives of the mission are to characterize the chemical composition of Mercury's surface, the geologic history, the nature of the magnetic field, the size and state of the core, the volatile inventory at the poles, and the nature of Mercury'sexosphere and magnetosphere over a nominal orbital mission of one Earth year.
MESSENGER performed a successful Earthswingby a year after launch, on 2 August2005, with the closest approach at 19:13 UTC at an altitude of 2,347 km (1,458 statute miles) over central Mongolia.
The MESSENGERspacecraft, designed and built by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL), is a squat box (1.27 m × 1.42 m × 1.85 m) with a semi-cylindrical thermal shade for protection from the Sun and two solar panel wings extending radially.
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