A short maneuver today kept MESSENGER on track for its Aug. 2 flyby of Earth – the major gravity assist that starts the next leg of the spacecraft’s journey toward Mercury. Mission controllers at the ...

The launch of MESSENGER, a NASA space probe set to conduct the first scientific investigation of Mercury as it orbits the planet, will be launched aboard a Boeing Delta II Heavy expendable launch ...

MESSENGER’s mid-December trajectory correction maneuver (TCM-19) went so well that the mission design and navigation teams have decided that a TCM scheduled for January 10 will not be needed.

After more than a dozen laps through the inner solar system and six planetary flybys, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft will move into orbit around Mercury on at around 9 p.m. EDT on March 17, 2011. The ...

COLUMBIA, Md., April 4, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Integral Systems, Inc., (Nasdaq:ISYS) today congratulated NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) for successfully ...

Next week, NASA's Messenger spacecraft will become the first probe ever to orbit Mercury. Scientists are hoping the mission will solve a host of mysteries about our neighboring planet. Entering orbit ...

In just a few hours, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft will smack into the surface of Mercury, thus ending its 11 year mission. It sounds like a disaster, but this is always the way it was supposed to go ...

Before crashing into Mercury's surface, the MESSENGER probe sent a glorious visual archive back to Earth. Here's what the probe taught us about Mercury before it died. Share on Facebook (opens in a ...

Understanding the sun from afar isn't easy. How do you figure out what powers solar flares – the intense bursts of radiation coming from the release of magnetic energy associated with sunspots – when ...

NASA’s Mercury-bound Messenger spacecraft dropped into orbit around the tiny, orbitally eccentric planet just a few months ago, and it’s already sent back enough data to notably alter our take on the ...