NASA's Messenger probe crashes into Mercury

30 April 2015 by Jacob Aron

Messenger's final image (Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington)

Don't shoot the Messenger – it's already crashed into Mercury. NASA's Messenger space probe, which has been orbiting the planet for more than four years, ran out of fuel and hit the surface at 3:26:02 pm Eastern time (20:26 in the UK) on 30 April.

The spacecraft actually burned the last of its fuel in January, but in April, NASA engineers squeezed out a little extra thrust by venting on-board helium gas, which was used to pressurise the fuel. This gave the craft more time in orbit, with a final boost last Friday.

With nothing left to fight gravity, Messenger (pictured below) crashed into Mercury's surface at over 14,000 kilometres an hour, creating a crater 16 metres across.

(Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington)

Examining the fresh crater could provide data on how space weathering affects Mercury's heavily pockmarked surface – but this crater is too small to see from Earth, and the Hubble Space Telescope can't look at Mercury because it would have to point at the sun. That means astronomers won't get a good look at it until a joint European and Japanese mission, called BepiColombo, reaches it in 2024.