NASA has confirmed that a few hours ago the Messenger (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) space probe ended its mission by crashing on the surface of the planet Mercury. Messenger ran out of fuel and some maneuvers were recently programmed to prolong its life of a few more days. Eventually, even the helium normally used to pressurize the propellant was released in a jet that gave the probe one last push. It was a very successful mission that allowed us to discover many things about Mercury.

The Messenger space probe was launched on August 3, 2004 on a Delta II 7925 rocket. Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, which means that it’s also the fastes one. For this reason, Messenger made a complex trajectory in which flew by various planets to gain speed through a gravitational slingshot effect.

The first flyby of the planet Mercury was made by the Messenger space probe on January 14, 2008 but other maneuvers were needed for it to finally come into its orbit on March 18, 2011. That was a highly elliptical orbit, which usually was between 200 and 15,000 kilometers (between 124 and 9,300 miles) from the planet. During the mission, the orbit was modified several times.

The primary mission of the Messenger space probe lasted one year but was subsequently extended twice. During these four years it provided an enormous amount of data that allowed us to learn a lot about a planet that was little known.

The data collected by the Messenger space probe shedded light on the volcanic activity that occurred in the planet’s past, which influenced greatly its current geology. Among its findings there’s Mercury’s anomalous magnetic field, much weaker than the Earth’s and offset to the north of the planet’s center.

The mission of the Messenger space probe provided a lot of information about Mercury’s geology but also on its tenuous atmosphere and the chemical compounds on the planet. It also confirmed the existence of water ice in Mercury’s polar regions, theorized for a long time.

The discoveries made through the Messenger mission are very intriguing from a scientific perspective. Mercury looked like a boring planet that could only be appreciated by some scientists, however showed some features that prove that anywhere in the solar system there may be places full of surprises.

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