2006-10-23 02:21:05 UTC — 1000000 km
2006-10-23 05:24:28 UTC — 900000 km
2006-10-23 08:27:49 UTC — 800000 km
2006-10-23 11:31:05 UTC — 700000 km
2006-10-23 14:34:15 UTC — 600000 km
2006-10-23 17:37:14 UTC — 500000 km
2006-10-23 20:39:59 UTC — 400000 km
2006-10-23 23:42:21 UTC — 300000 km
2006-10-24 02:44:00 UTC — 200000 km
2006-10-24 05:44:07 UTC — 100000 km
2006-10-24 06:01:58 UTC — 90000 km
2006-10-24 06:19:46 UTC — 80000 km
2006-10-24 06:37:31 UTC — 70000 km
2006-10-24 06:55:12 UTC — 60000 km
2006-10-24 07:12:50 UTC — 50000 km
2006-10-24 07:30:24 UTC — 40000 km
2006-10-24 07:47:58 UTC — 30000 km
2006-10-24 08:05:50 UTC — 20000 km
2006-10-24 08:27:26 UTC — 10000 km
2006-10-24 08:34:00 UTC — 9044 km (2992 km above surface)

Note: geometric range, not corrected for light-time

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http://www.yaohua2000.org/

Are they taking any images this flyby?

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There is a growing tendancy to think of Man as a rational, thinking being, which is absurd.- Marvin the Martian.

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

7 hours and 13 minutes to the spacecrafts Venus first Flyby on October 24, 2006.

See

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

No, there is nothing happening during this pass except the encounter. They will be doing quite a bit of imaging at next year's pass.

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Keeper of the Jabberwock

It is 224 days until the second Venus encounter (5 June 2007).

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Keeper of the Jabberwock

There have been subtle hints from the Messenger PI (winks and nods, if you know what I mean) that the idea they won't do any science at this flybe is not entirely true. I don't think they will do any targetted imaging during the flyby, but perhaps some Mag measurements which can be comared to VEX will take place.

Doug

Ms. Emily is back!:

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000744/

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

MESSENGER Heads Past Venus, Next Stop: Venus

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

^
Hope that's the first of many images that will settle once and for all (especially on the second encounter) the long controversy over whether Venus's clouds are featureless in visible light.

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"Call me old-fashioned, but I think fire is magic. And it scares me a lot."

--The State

And, djellison welcome to BAUT Forum. And, may I say, I enjoyed your week in the barrel doing the Planetary Society Blog, if you're the same DJ Ellison. (And, thanks for the other spacey ways you've contributed to society.)

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0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

Yes! Welcome.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Who me?



Thanks for the nice comments about the Blog week, it was hard work, but I've had some nice feedback and it was a great week. Nothing quite as surreal as being sat on the floor of a huge conference centre with the Mission Manager of MRO sticking paperclips into the edge of a 6ft x 6ft printout of the top right quarter of that first HiRISE image,

I'll pop in from time to time if I see somewhere I can give some input.

Cheers

Doug

Messenger has recently passed its most recent aphelion. In 160 days it will have passed perihelion and be half way to aphelion again when it will pass Venus and lose enough velocity to fall in to Mercury's orbit for the first time.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Messenger has now completed three full orbits around the Sun since launch.

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Keeper of the Jabberwock

I was looking at the Messenger website today when I noticed that this orbit will be the final time the probe will travel outside of Venus. When this orbit is finished (sometime late this year), Messenger will be just outside of Mercury orbit and a little behind the planet. It will catch up with Mercury about a year from now.

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Keeper of the Jabberwock

Messenger is crossing inside of the orbit of Venus. It is presently well behind Venus but it will take a shorter, faster path and catch the planet this June.

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Keeper of the Jabberwock

Thanks for the updates guys !

When they launched it, it seemed like it would be just short of an eternity before it started returning pictures of Mercury, but we are now only ten and a half months away from the first fly-by.

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Forming opinions as we speak

A mere ten and a half months...

Only NASA missions could make that seem like a little while

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There is a growing tendancy to think of Man as a rational, thinking being, which is absurd.- Marvin the Martian.

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

Just think..... for those of you in the USA.... in 10 1/2 months you will be thinking of your 2007 tax return!!!!

News from the Messenger team. Note the paragraph at the bottom. Four years to orbit insertion.

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Keeper of the Jabberwock

The Messenger team is celebrating the 40% mark.

Its current speed 42.84 km/s. Compare this to New Horizon's speed of 21.70 km/s as it speeds away from Jupiter. Both speeds are relative to the sun.

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Keeper of the Jabberwock

I'm looking forward to the first MESSENGER flyby next year than orbital insertion; there's our golden opportunity to see what Mariner 10 missed, even if (knock on wood) she doesn't make it to her final orbit.

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"Call me old-fashioned, but I think fire is magic. And it scares me a lot."

--The State

I've been thinking the same thing. I'm very interested in seeing the images from the first flyby. Orbiting will be great, but some initial images will be very nice.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Messenger is at perihelion. At this hour +49 days, Messenger wil fly by Venus.

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Keeper of the Jabberwock

For people like me who track the progress of the missions, one nice thing about Messenger is that every orbit takes less time. Watching the outbound probes, they are always slowing down and orbits take years.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Status Report

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Keeper of the Jabberwock

Messenger is now passing between Venus and the Sun. It will cross in front of Venus next week and be momentarily outside Venusian orbit for the last time before falling permanently inside her orbit.

Closest encounter with Venus occurs at this very hour in seven days.

From the website:

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Keeper of the Jabberwock

I found the 'where is MESSENGER now' link on their webpage to be very helpful

Messenger is a relatively small distance from Venus right now (two million miles (give or take a million)). I'm hoping to see some images and/or other details about this encounter soon. Not so much that I need to see images of a cloudy planet, but that I'd like to see images from Messenger.

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Forming opinions as we speak