The MESSENGER probe has now successfully and safely entered orbit around Mercury! It took many years to get there, and a trip involving half a dozen different planetary flybys, but late last night the probe finally went into orbit around the planet that huddles closest to the Sun. We won’t get any new pictures for a couple of weeks – they have to check out the probe and its systems first – and then we won’t be getting lots of “raw” images like we do from the Mars rovers, and CASSINI. Instead we’ll get daily image releases. Well, we have been spoiled a bit!
There are lots of very detailed write-ups of MESSENGER’s mission, and last night’s successful orbit insertion, all across the internet, so I won’t say much about that here. A quick Google search will find you all the info you want. Instead I’ll just say how amazingly proud I am that the MESSENGER team have used a poem I wrote especially for them. They’ve put it up on the official MESSENGER website, as part of the MOI celebrations, and you can find it here:
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/poem3.html
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A brilliant poem – I love the description of Us as the “waterworld” – and an exciting new mission. What’s not to love?
Absolutely terrific blog.
“Head down against the gusts of its golden solar wind.” Wonderful.
Hope you don’t mind but I reposted your poem at my blog as part of a Messenger post.
Great job. We should appreciate them