06-June-2007, 05:49 PM
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Vulcan Administrator
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Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Greenbelt, MD
Posts: 26,027
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MESSENGER Completes Second Flyby of Venus,
Makes Its Way toward First Flyby of Mercury in 33 Years
Quote:
NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft swung by Venus for the second time early this evening for a gravity assist that shrank the radius of its orbit around the Sun, pulling it closer to Mercury. At nearly 15,000 miles per hour, this change in MESSENGER’s velocity is the largest of the mission.
Mission operators at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., said MESSENGER’s systems performed flawlessly as the spacecraft sped over the cloud tops of Venus at a relative velocity of more than 30,000 miles per hour, passing within 210 miles of the surface of the planet at 23:08 UTC (7:08 p.m. EDT).
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