MESSENGER completes 3,000th orbit of Mercury

MESSENGER has recently completed its 3,000th orbit of Mercury and moved closer to the planet than any spacecraft has been before, dropping to an altitude of 199 kilometers (123.7 miles) above the planet's surface.

"We are cutting through Mercury's magnetic field in a different geometry, and that has shed new light on the energetic electron population," MESSENGER Project Scientist Ralph McNutt, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md said.

"In addition, we are now spending more time closer to the planet in general-and that has, in turn, increased the opportunities for all of the remote sensing instruments to make higher-resolution observations of the planet," he said.

MESSENGER has been completing three orbits of Mercury every day since April 2012, when two orbit-correction maneuvers reduced its orbital period about Mercury from 12 hours to 8 hours.

The shorter orbit has allowed the science team to explore new questions about Mercury's composition, geological evolution, and environment that were raised by discoveries made during the first year of orbital operations.

The probe has been edging closer and closer to Mercury since March 2013, at about the time that the spacecraft orbit's minimum altitude passed closest to Mercury's north pole.