Messenger is at its 5th perihelion since launch just a third of an AU from the Sun. It is closer to the our central star than Mariner 10 ever was. It is pretty much at Mercury orbit, though Mercury is on the other side of the sun at the moment. Messenger will be here again in 167 days.
EDIT:
Oops, I'm off by a few days. According to the
The Messenger Team's update, perihelion is tomorrow. From the webpage:
Quote:
|
Tomorrow, the MESSENGER probe will come within 0.33 AU of the Sun-49.67 million kilometers (or 30.86 million miles). "This is the closest we've approached the Sun during the mission so far," notes MESSENGER's Deputy Project Scientist Brian Anderson of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "It will give us an opportunity to see how the spacecraft behaves this near the Sun."
|