MESSENGER spacecraft makes crashing finale after 11-yr mission

NASA has completed its MESSENGER mission with expected impact on Mercury's surface.

The planetary exploration mission came to a planned, but nonetheless dramatic, end on Thursday when it slammed into Mercury's surface at about 8,750 mph and created a new crater on the planet's surface.

Mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, have confirmed NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft impacted the surface of Mercury, as anticipated, at 3:26 p.m. EDT.

Mission control confirmed end of operations just a few minutes later, at 3:40 pm, when no signal was detected by NASA's Deep Space Network station in Goldstone, California, at the time the spacecraft would have emerged from behind the planet.

This conclusion was independently confirmed by the DSN's Radio Science team, which also was monitoring for a signal from MESSENGER.

Scientist John Grunsfeld said that going out with a bang as it impacts the surface of Mercury, they are celebrating MESSENGER as more than a successful mission, adding that the mission will continue to provide scientists with a bonanza of new results as they begin the next phase of this mission, analysing the exciting data already in the archives, and unravelling the mysteries of Mercury.

Prior to impact, MESSENGER's mission design team predicted the spacecraft would pass a few miles over a lava-filled basin on the planet before striking the surface and creating a crater estimated to be as wide as 50 feet.

Mission operations manager Andy Calloway of APL said that they monitored MESSENGER's beacon signal for about 20 additional minutes and it was strange to think during that time MESSENGER had already impacted, but they could not confirm it immediately due to the vast distance across space between Mercury and Earth.

MESSENGER was launched on August 3, 2004, and began orbiting Mercury on March 17, 2011. Although it completed its primary science objectives by March 2012, the spacecraft's mission was extended two times, allowing it to capture images and information about the planet in unprecedented detail.

Image: The MESSENGER spacecraft collided with Mercury's surface, creating a crater estimated to be 16 meters (52 feet) in diameter. Photograph: NASA.gov