AS101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Mariner 10
Document Summary
Mercury"s iron core makes up about 42% of its volume. The fact that it has a magnetic field at all is a bit of an enigma. The first spacecraft to ever visit mercury was mariner 10, referred to earlier, which made several close passes in the mid-1970s. It ran out of fuel before photographic completion of the whole planet. For a full history of mariner 10"s exploration see http://nssdc. gsfc. nasa. gov/nmc/tmp/1973-085a. html. No other mission was scheduled until very recently when messenger (mercury. Surface, space environment, geochemisty, and ranging), a nasa mission, was launched in august of 2004 to study various aspects of mercury. It has used gravity assists from venus to achieve orbit around mercury, an event that finally took pace in march, 2011. Before then, however, three flybys were scheduled; the first two happened in 2008 (jan. 14 and oct. 6) and the third took place in.
