[quote]Date acquired: March 31, 2012
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 131766564
Image ID: 6418
Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Center Latitude: 38.15°
Center Longitude: 66.18°
Resolution: 410 meters/pixel (0.25 miles/pixel) in the lower left corner of the image
Scale: The large crater in the center of the image (Copland) is about 210 kilometers (130 miles) in diameter.
Spacecraft Altitude: 16,200 kilometers (10,070 miles)
Incidence Angle: 69.1°
Emission Angle: 80.8°
Phase Angle: 138.2°
Of Interest: This discovery image provides the first evidence that Mercury has a small natural satellite or moon. Visible as a small bright spot in an image taken yesterday by the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) Wide Angle Camera (WAC), the moon is approximately 70 meters (230 feet) in diameter and orbits Mercury at a mean distance of 14,300 km (8,890 miles). A proposal to name the moon "Caduceus," after the staff carried by the Roman god Mercury, has been submitted by the MESSENGER team to the International Astronomical Union, the body responsible for assigning names to celestial objects.
This discovery presents an unprecedented opportunity for a return of samples from the Mercury system, as Project Scientist Nat MacRulf explains. "We have yet to identify a sample from Mercury in any of the meteorite collections we have here on Earth. Such a sample would give us critical insight into the chemical composition of Mercury and the timing of crustal formation on that body, leading to a better understanding of how the planet formed and evolved. If we could obtain a sample of Caduceus, it would enhance the scientific return of the MESSENGER mission beyond our wildest dreams!"
Work on designing a scenario for sample return is already underway. MESSENGER Project Manager Burt Panini held an emergency meeting with the MESSENGER mission operations and navigation teams yesterday evening to determine if the spacecraft could be targeted toward the diminutive moon. After an intensive discussion, a unanimous decision was taken to abandon the orbit-correction maneuvers that had been planned for later this month to place the spacecraft in an eight-hour orbit. Instead, the new plan is to use the remaining propellant to crash MESSENGER into Caduceus. "Our detailed analysis tells us that if we act now, and with the right trajectory, MESSENGER will impart just enough momentum to the moon to break it free of Mercury's gravity well and set it on an Earth-crossing trajectory suitable for recovery as a Mercury meteorite", said Panini.
This action will form the basis of a new request to NASA by the MESSENGER team for an extended extended mission, tentatively called "MESSENGER Infinitesimally Nudging Caduceus," or MIN-C for short. Once MIN-C is approved by NASA, the spacecraft will be targeted for a collision trajectory. If Caduceus is successfully released from the pull of Mercury and placed on a course to reach Earth, we can expect the moon to arrive at Earth by 2014. "The risk to the public is reassuringly small", offers MESSENGER mission design lead Adam McJames. "We have designed a trajectory that will bring the moon to Earth at a remote location on the Wilkes Land ice sheet in Antarctica. This trajectory will avoid all population centers and will put the moon's impact site within reach for retrieval by the scientific staff at the U.S.-operated McMurdo Station."
If successful, MESSENGER's extended extended MIN-C mission will mark the first instance of the documented arrival to Earth of material from the Mercury system. Moreover, it will serve as the basis for a new Discovery-class mission proposal currently in development by the Applied Psychics Laboratory for a Mercury lander mission for in situ X-ray analysis of surface composition. That mission is to be named the Hermean On-surface Analysis with X-rays.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington[/quote]
[url=http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/image.php?page=1&gallery_id=2&image_id=811]Source[/url]
[img]http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/pics/Caduceus%20Composite.png[/img]
Released a few days ago, but I haven't seen any coverage of it.
looks more like space debris that got caught in it's gravitational pull.
Damn, that's small. I can see why we missed it until now.
[editline]4th April 2012[/editline]
[QUOTE=Irockz;35432353]looks more like space debris that got caught in it's gravitational pull.[/QUOTE]
Still a moon.
[QUOTE=Irockz;35432353]looks more like space debris that got caught in it's gravitational pull.[/QUOTE]
Pretty sure that's the definition of a moon.
[QUOTE=Irockz;35432353]looks more like space debris that got caught in it's gravitational pull.[/QUOTE]
In the end that's all a moon usually is.
[quote]an object that orbits a planet or other body larger than itself and which is not man-made[/quote]
Yup.
[QUOTE]Work on designing a scenario for sample return is already underway. MESSENGER Project Manager Burt Panini held an emergency meeting with the MESSENGER mission operations and navigation teams yesterday evening to determine if the spacecraft could be targeted toward the diminutive moon. After an intensive discussion, a unanimous decision was taken to abandon the orbit-correction maneuvers that had been planned for later this month to place the spacecraft in an eight-hour orbit. Instead, the new plan is to use the remaining propellant to crash MESSENGER into Caduceus. "Our detailed analysis tells us that if we act now, and with the right trajectory, MESSENGER will impart just enough momentum to the moon to break it free of Mercury's gravity well and set it on an Earth-crossing trajectory suitable for recovery as a Mercury meteorite", said Panini.[/QUOTE]
I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of hijacking a moon and crashing it into the Antarctic.
Uh I think this is an April fool's joke.
[QUOTE=Swebonny;35432505]Uh I think this is an April fool's joke.[/QUOTE]
Eh, I think it is possible. A large reason that we've never seen this before could be that, y'know, Mercury is closer to the sun than us and if we want to look at it we are basically looking into the sun.
[QUOTE=Repulsion;35432532]Eh, I think it is possible. A large reason that we've never seen this before could be that, y'know, Mercury is closer to the sun than us and if we want to look at it we are basically looking into the sun.[/QUOTE]
Read the article first.
I think it's an April Fools joke. That "moon" looks a bit too much like the asteroid Ida.
[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/243_ida_crop.jpg[/IMG]
But in another news, the asteroid Ida [I]does[/I] have a moon, called Dactyl. :eng101:
Uhh, in the original article there's a link to an April Fool's joke: [url]http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/image.php?page=3&gallery_id=2&image_id=448[/url]
Oh.
Let the dumbs come.
(still could NOT be an April Fool's joke, though. It's possible)
Edit: Okay yeah this is probably an April Fool's joke.
Edit2: Oh god I'm retarded this dialogue is hilarious and kind of impossible.
[I][B]"...If we could obtain a sample of Caduceus, it would enhance the scientific return of the MESSENGER mission beyond our wildest dreams!"[/B][/I]
Findings like this reduce me to a child-like state of euphoria.
[QUOTE=Swebonny;35432573]Read the article first.[/QUOTE]Yeah, I'm not seeing anything else aside for this source. It's fake.
Move along, nothing to see here.
I just realized what crashing a 70m object into Antarctica would entail.
[editline]4th April 2012[/editline]
Yeah, this is a joke.
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