NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft successfully achieved orbit around Mercury at approximately 9p.m. EDT on Thursday, March 17, 2011. This marks the first time a spacecraft has accomplished this engineering and scientific milestone at our solar system's innermost planet.
MESSENGER's main thruster fired for approximately 15 minutes at 8:45 p.m., slowing the spacecraft by 1,929 miles per hour and easing it into the planned orbit about Mercury. The rendezvous took place about 96 million miles from Earth.
NASA engineers received telemetry data confirming orbit insertion. NASA's engineers Operations Center, received the anticipated radiometric signals confirming nominal burn shutdown and successful insertion of the MESSENGER probe into orbit around the planet Mercury where it started transmitting data. Upon review of the data, the engineering and operations teams confirmed the burn executed nominally with all subsystems reporting a clean burn and no logged errors.
The journey took Messenger six and half years to travel 4.9 billions miles to the planet Mercury. The mission's primary science phase began on April 4, 2011.
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