SpaceflightNow.com:
Probe whips past Earth on long voyage to Mercury
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: August 2, 2005
Earth's first extended visit to the planet Mercury is now one step closer to success after the MESSENGER probe celebrated its birthday one day early on Tuesday with a speedy flyby of its home planet to tweak its course for arrival in orbit in 2011.
MESSENGER made its closest approach to terra firma at 1913 GMT (3:13 p.m. EDT) as it flew 1,458 miles over central Mongolia near the capital of Ulaanbaatar.
In an effort to reduce the amount of propellant MESSENGER had to carry during its launch, engineers designed the mission to include a series of six gravity assist maneuvers past Earth, Venus, and Mercury. These flybys can utilize the force of gravity to alter the future trajectory of the spacecraft, allowing it to swing from planet to planet before eventually entering orbit around Mercury.
"One flyby down, five more to go," said Mark Holdridge, mission operations manager for MESSENGER at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. "Now the mission begins."
Cool, RW! I din't realise that we just had a flyby.
And wasn't that terrific what Steve & company did yesterday? I was glued to my moniter! NASA did good.
I just noticed my spelling needs some tweeking on above post. Whoops.