A US satellite has crashed on the planet Mercury. The Messenger probe hit Thursday evening at 21:26 hours Dutch time on the surface at a rate of over 14,000 kilometers per hour. “I think it’s time to say goodbye to all my friends, family and support,” ‘wrote’ the probe in his last message on Twitter
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Photo: AP
The impact was not visible from the earth. When the flight controls no signal was more, it was clear that the existence of the Messenger had ended. The blow must have formed a dozen meters wide crater.
The Messenger had no more fuel and thus could not escape the gravity of Mercury, the planet he has explored in recent years.
Mercury is the smallest planet of our solar system and is closest to the sun. Across the planet was little known before the Messenger began its work. The probe discovered, inter alia, frozen water on the surface and water vapor in the atmosphere.
The Messenger was launched in 2004. Then he turned fifteen times around the sun, he shaved by Earth once, Venus twice he visited and he flew past Mercury three times. In 2011 he became the first spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury. Since then he has turned more than 4,000 laps around the planet. In all, he has a distance of nearly 8 billion kilometers behind. It was expected that the probe would maintain more than one year
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