Nasa's messenger spacecraft crashes into Mercury

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (Nasa’s) Mercury surface, space environment, geochemistry, and ranging (messenger), the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, crashed on Thursday. It plunged from the orbit and slammed into the planet. 

The Wall Street Journal  quoted lead scientist Sean Solomon, director of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, as saying: “Messenger set a record for planetary flybys — once past the Earth, twice past the Venus and thrice past the Mercury, before entering Mercury’s orbit — and survived both punishing heat and extreme doses of radiation to surpass expectations.”

Thursday’s crash was reported to have occurred on the side of the Mercury that faces away from the Earth and telescopes.

Several minutes had passed before Nasa could receive a confirmation. Controllers received no signal from the Messenger when it was supposed to be back in the coverage zone, a sign that the spacecraft, measuring 10 feet solar wingtip to wingtip, had succumbed to gravity.

The Messenger controller team had on April 28 executed the last of seven orbit-correction manoeuvres to keep the spacecraft aloft for an additional month.

The robotic National Aeronautics and Space Administration spacecraft circled the solar system’s innermost planet 4,105 times and collected more than 277,000 images.

Mariner 10, launched in 1973, was the first mission intended to research on the planet Mercury.