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  • 30/04/2024
On April 30, 2015, NASA's MESSENGER mission came to an end when the spacecraft intentionally crashed into the surface of Mercury.

MESSENGER was the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury and the second spacecraft to study it up close after NASA's Mariner 10 flew by the planet in the 1970s. MESSENGER spent four years orbiting Mercury. During that time, it mapped the surface of Mercury in unprecedented detail. The mission discovered water ice and organic compounds around Mercury's north pole. It also found that Mercury has a weird offset magnetic field that doesn't line up with its axis of rotation. The mission was only supposed to last one year, but NASA extended it twice so it could continue its groundbreaking observations of Mercury. It eventually ran out of fuel, so NASA intentionally crashed it into Mercury, where it created a new crater.

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Transcript
00:00On this day, in space.
00:03On April 30th, 2015, NASA's MESSENGER mission came to an end
00:07when the spacecraft intentionally crashed into the surface of Mercury.
00:11MESSENGER was the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury,
00:14and the second spacecraft to study it up close
00:16after NASA's Mariner 10 flew by the planet in the 1970s.
00:19MESSENGER spent four years orbiting Mercury.
00:22During that time, it mapped the surface of Mercury in unprecedented detail.
00:27The mission discovered water ice and organic compounds around Mercury's north pole.
00:31It also found that Mercury has a weird offset magnetic field
00:35that doesn't line up with its axis of rotation.
00:38The mission was only supposed to last one year,
00:40but NASA extended it twice so it could continue making its groundbreaking observations of Mercury.
00:45It eventually ran out of fuel,
00:47so NASA intentionally crashed it into Mercury, where it created a new crater.
00:52And that's what happened on this day in space.
00:57NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

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