This article talks about how NASA has a spacecraft called Messenger orbiting Mercury. Messenger successfully veered into pinpoint orbit Thursday night after a 6 1/2 year trip and 7.9 billion kilometers. Mercury is the fifth planet in our solar system that NASA has orbited. NASA has said that positioning Messenger was very tricky because of the gravitational pull of the sun. Everyone at NASA is very happy that Messenger is in place and now it can do it's job. Messenger will begin to take pictures and scan of Mercury in NASA's attempt to understand how it works. Mercury is the closest planet to the sun in our solar system and because of that Mercury has a very extreme climate. The surface of Mercury reaches up to 800 degrees, but in some craters that don't receive any light it is colder than 300 degrees below zero.I think that the fact that NASA will be able to learn a lot more about how Mercury works is really great. We will have a grater understanding of our solar system after Messenger has collected data on Mercury. Maybe NASA will find life forms on Mercury that could help us understand our solar system more. Although it would be cool if Mercury had life forms on it I think that it is very unlikely. No life form could live in the conditions on Mercury because it's either way to hot or way to cold. Overall though, the fact that NASA is collecting data on Mercury is quite amazing.
No comments:
Post a Comment