Astronomy Buff

Mercury MESSENGER Website is Really Cool

by Tony on February 5th, 2008

I missed the Flyby of the MESSENGER spacecraft as it flew by Mercury last month. I looked at the pictures and read a few news releases after the fact, but I missed all the real-time updates that were coming out of NASA/JPL.

It turns out that I needn’t have worried. I just went through the entire flyby at JHUAPL’s really cool website that allows me to go through the entire thing again. Here’s a screenshot:

Screenshot: JHUAPL/MESSENGER

This is the way all space missions should be presented. I found myself playing around with this website for over an hour before I had to get back to work. This was a lot of fun. I could click on any phase of the flyby in the lower left window and replay just that part or I could go through the whole thing as it happened.

If you get a chance, go check it out, it’s a lot of fun…

Here’s a link to NASA’s main MESSENGER page which has the press releases and JHUAPL’s, which has the same stuff, just uses JHUAPL’s look and feel.

It’s amazing that this is the first time we’ve been to the planet since 1975. Here’s one of the latest images:

Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL

Technorati Tags: Mercury, Mercury MESSENGER Mission, NASA

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