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Mercury's Messenger Orbiter Faces Fiery Death

posted by takyon on Monday April 20 2015, @05:40PM   
from the bounceless-landing dept.

Jaruzel writes:

A spacecraft that carries a sensor built at the University of Michigan (among others) is about to crash into the planet closest to the sun — just as NASA intended, reports Phys.org:

MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) launched from Earth in 2004, traveled 4.9 billion miles, and has been orbiting Mercury for the past three years, giving scientists an unprecedented look into both the history of the solar system and a planet they knew relatively little about. It will run out of fuel around April 30 and end its mission with a bang.

Without a thick atmosphere to slow the craft down and partially incinerate it, MESSENGER will keep accelerating as it barrels toward Mercury. It'll be traveling around 8,750 mph when it hits.

• Is the name driven by the marketing dept? Is the name driven by the marketing dept? (Score: 2) by Alfred on Monday April 20 2015, @06:31PM

  by Alfred (4006) on Monday April 20 2015, @06:31PM (#173222) Journal

  MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging)

  I hate it when people invent acronyms like this. Way too much of a stretch to be clever. Might as well take letters from the middle of the words. This is worse than the title/acronyms that Congress comes up with for bills.

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• Re:Is the name driven by the marketing dept? (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @06:49PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @06:49PM (#173234)

  Could have been worse...could have been recursive. GNU's Not Unix!!

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• Re:Is the name driven by the marketing dept? Re:Is the name driven by the marketing dept? (Score: 4, Funny) by Ryuugami on Monday April 20 2015, @06:59PM

  by Ryuugami (2925) on Monday April 20 2015, @06:59PM (#173238)

  A good collection of such acronyms can be found at Dumb Or Overly Forced Astronomical Acronyms Site (or DOOFAAS) [harvard.edu]. There are both great and atrocious ones :)

  Some choice picks:

  AzTEC - The AZtronomical Thermal Emission Camera
  BIGASS - Bright Infrared Galaxy All Sky Survey
  GADZOOKS! - Gadolinium Antineutrino Detector Zealously Outperforming Old Kamiokande, Super!
  GOD - Gravity One Dimension (paper: 'The likelihood of GODs' existence')
  MIDGet - Millimeter Interferometry of Dwarf Galaxies
  SHIT - Super Huge Interferometric Telescope
  TANGOinPARIS - Testing Astroparticle with the New Gev/tev Observations Positrons And electRons : Identifying the Sources

  Also, I don't think it's worse than Congress: bill title acronyms are usually the opposite of the contents :)

  --
  If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber

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  • Re:Is the name driven by the marketing dept? (Score: 3, Funny) by Alfred on Monday April 20 2015, @08:15PM

    by Alfred (4006) on Monday April 20 2015, @08:15PM (#173263) Journal

    Oh dear God.

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• Re:Is the name driven by the marketing dept? (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @08:20PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2015, @08:20PM (#173264)

  No, the marketing department is busy sending out warnings to the landing zone on Mercury, so the residents can evacuate.

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