This is Where NASA's MESSENGER Mercury Mission Will Die

At 3:26:02 p.m. ET today, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft will careen into Mercury at a speed of 3.91 kilometers per second (over 8,700 miles per hour), adding a fresh crater to the small planet’s pockmarked surface. NASA estimates that, at that velocity, the small robotic probe will produce a crater some 52 feet (16 meters) across.

In this map of Mercury, created by data from MESSENGER’s Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) and Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) instruments, the spacecraft’s final resting place has been rendered.

Currently, MESSENGER’s mission team predict the spacecraft will hit a ridge slightly to the northeast of the 250 mile-wide “Shakespeare” impact crater in the lower left of this image. The impact site is therefore likely going to be roughly in the center of this map.

The landscape is color-coded according to height, or relief. The reddest hues represent ridges around 2 miles higher than the surrounding landscape. It looks like, as MESSENGER zips across the landscape on its final orbital pass, these mountainous features will doom the probe.

After 4 years of stunning orbital operations about Mercury, MESSENGER finally ran out of fuel. Although mission engineers were able to slightly extend the mission, the time has come to say goodbye to the first ever robotic probe we’ve put into Mercury orbit as gravity takes over and forces this dramatic end to a historic mission to the inner solar system.

From Discovery News