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.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday April 21 2015, @05:50AM
This make me sad. I proposed the heliocentric hypothesis in the Third Century BCE, and if only we had technology like this. We had to make do with pointy sticks, stuck in the ground at know points, nonetheless, but pointy sticks all the same. And now a probe orbiting the planet Hermes has reached the end of its life span, and this bickering over names is the best Soylentils can come up with? It makes me sad that I chose to migrate from the "other" site. But it is not much better there. Please, try to be respectful of the tools of our science, they serve us in ways that nothing else can, and we owe them our knowledge of the universe. Obligatory XKCD: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/spirit.png [xkcd.com]