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The mission of the famous American automatic station The messenger is officially completed. April 30th at 22 hours 46 minutes Moscow time, the device crashed on Mercury.
The National Space Administration has enough long ago calculated the exact date and time of the interplanetary collision stations with the surface of the smallest planet in the solar system. Thus, the Americans long before the crash knew when it will happen.
According to NASA official statement, the cause of the fall unmanned spacecraft has become a depletion of its reserves fuel. As expected, the “Messenger” fell back side of mercury. For this reason, it was impossible to drop observe through earthly telescopes. Automatic station supposedly crashed into the surface of Mercury at speed fourteen thousand kilometers per hour, leaving a crater with a diameter fifteen to sixteen meters. A quarter of an hour before the end of the mission the on-board computer said goodbye to Earth.
Recall that the space probe “Messenger” began its flight in August 2004 The vehicle traveling to Mercury sent to Earth over two hundred and fifty thousand shots, allowing the world scientists (all NASA materials are laid out for free access) make some discoveries about a distant planet.
To this we can only add that the study of Mercury using Messenger was designed for a year, but this period is somewhat times extended due to the fact that the automatic space the station turned out to be “very economical” on fuel, which allowed lovers of astronomers even make the assumption that the “Messenger” consciously does not want to leave orbit and die. But is it all early or ends late …
NASA Mercury Time
