CAPE CANAVERAL: Nasa’s pioneering Messenger spacecraft ended its four-year study of the planet Mercury yesterday by crashing into the planet’s surface, scientists said.
Flight controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland earlier estimated that Messenger, traveling at more than 8,700 mph (14,000 kph), would hit the ground near Mercury’s north pole at 3:26pm EDT (1926 GMT).
Messenger, with no more fuel to manoeuvre, fought the downward push of the sun’s gravity until it impacted the planet’s surface.
During its 4,104 orbits of Mercury, Messenger made surprising detections of potassium, sulfur and other volatiles on the planet’s surface. Reuters
