MESSENGER Completes Primary Mission at Mercury, Settles in for Another Year

MESSENGER Mercury Orbit Insertion AnimationWith more than 99% of Mercury's surface imaged under similar illumination and viewing conditions, and with final spacecraft performance and final spacecraft orbit data available, MESSENGER's mission design team has updated the animation of MESSENGER's Mercury orbit insertion (MOI) maneuver. 

The largest and most important propulsive maneuver of the mission, MOI used more than 31% of the total propellant to transition the spacecraft's orbit center from the Sun to Mercury. 

About 2.5 weeks after MOI, after sufficient opportunity to monitor spacecraft health, temperature, and functionality, the primary science phase of the mission began.

This updated animation includes Mercury surface images from MESSENGER and a few extremely small areas with images from Mariner 10 flybys of Mercury in 1974 and 1975. 

"This animation features the best reconstructed orientation of the spacecraft, renderings of thruster flames as they occurred each second of MOI, as well as other details about the progress and orbit location relative to Mercury," says MESSENGER Mission Design Lead Engineer Jim McAdams. 

The new MOI animation and a counterpart from March 2011 may be viewed near the end of the animations listed here.