Posted on 05/01/2025 2:27:32 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Explanation: The first to orbit inner planet Mercury, the MESSENGER spacecraft came to rest on this region of Mercury's surface on April 30, 2015. Constructed from MESSENGER image and laser altimeter data, the projected scene looks north over the northeastern rim of the broad, lava filled Shakespeare basin. The large, 48 kilometer (30 mile) wide crater Janacek is near the upper left edge. Terrain height is color coded with red regions about 3 kilometers above blue ones. MESSENGER'S final orbit was predicted to end near the center, with the spacecraft impacting the surface at nearly 4 kilometers per second (over 8,700 miles per hour) and creating a new crater about 16 meters (52 feet) in diameter. The impact on the far side of Mercury was not observed by telescopes, but confirmed when no signal was detected from the spacecraft given time to emerge from behind the planet. Launched in 2004, the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemisty and Ranging spacecraft completed over 4,000 orbits after reaching the Solar System's innermost planet in 2011.
That is from the days when we were only limited by our imaginations.
As is Enceladus also.
Sorry, I had the wrong planet, Enceladus actually belonging to Saturn, not Jupiter.
Venus is hot because women are from Venus. But, Mars is cold. It just occurred to me.
And not the place to raise your kids.
Since Mercury is so close to the Sun a stable orbit was not possible. Messenger had to do orbital corrections to maintain orbit. Of course it eventually ran out of the fuel needed to stay in orbit so it crashed.
And in 5 million years you will have “Cilia of Gold”..............
A little too warm for me….🙂
But they are a binary system.
#6 I came across this the other day:
If the Earth was flat, cats would have pushed everything over the edge by now.
As a cat owner, I can verify this to be true. I have one cat in particular who takes great joy pushing things off to watch them fall.
We won’t live long enough to see it, but I suspect Mars and beyond will not be simply a destination for rich vacationers.
That is, unless we discover some sort of unlimited and cheap power source as well as tech that allows instantaneous travel between any points in the universe.
Frankly, I also don’t think the Lord will wait that long. As much as I’m fascinated by modern tech, I think it will be our undoing, and in short order. I think we’re even seeing the beginning stages of it.
Stay tuned.
To be fair, I recently found out that Jupiter HAS no surface, at all. So there is that. 😁
I always thought that “gas giant” meant it had a really deep atmosphere with a relatively small planet at the core. I think that is what I was taught in public schools (graduated in 1972). But based on what I’m seeing now on the internet, it’s “gas of a sort” all the way down. Of course, the pressure as you get into it probably gives something more like liquid, but still...
😉😁
Yeah. I confess that my opinion depends on certain types of future tech being invented (better robots and AI) or not being invented (transporter beems or exploitation of dilythium crystals) 😎
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