NASA Space Probe Ready for 7-Year Launch

The U.S. space probe Messenger, exploring Mercury for NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is hoping to travel a long way for about seven years as awaits launch from Cape Caneveral in Florida at 2:16 a.m. (local time) on August 2.

This is the second U.S. probe for Mercury exploration. The first was Mariner 10 launched in October of 1973.

Messenger will enter its orbit in March 2011 after a flight of 7.9 billion kilometers lasting seven years, and then send back information to Earth while orbiting Mercury for a year.

The NASA expects Messenger to show the origin of planets having soil (or rock) like Earth, and their evolution process. In particular, Messenger seeks to discover not only information about Mercury’s land surface and air, but also clues to solve Mercury’s mystery in which fire and ice coexist, which Mariner 10 failed to do. Mariner 10 only sent information on the hemisphere of Mercury. About $427 million (around 500 billion won) was put into the making and launch of Messenger, and up-to-date equipment is loaded on board, such as an overlap camera, which can take photos at both long and short distances, gamma rays and a neutron spectrometer. If NASA cannot launch Messenger due to reasons such as bad weather on the morning of August 2, it will launch it around the same time on one day between August 3 and 14.

Jin Lee leej@donga.com