Occasionally, NASA makes the news not because they did something super inspirational or
fantastic or crazy cool amazing, but because people just don't get it.
This is one of those times.
Howdy partners, this is DNews, thanks for coming by!
I'm Trace Dominguez. Mercury is the innermost planet in our solar system, it's both hot
and cold, and it's zipping around the sun every 88 days -- but to be honest, we don't
know as much about it as we'd like.
So NASA launched Messenger in 2004 to explore it -- it arrived in 2011, and has been orbiting
ever since.
It's learned about volatile compounds on the planet, its magnetic field, that there is
ice in the shadowed craters, and about the ancient tectonic and volcanic systems that
shaped the planet; among other things.
But now, this week.
TODAY.
About an hour ago, in fact; Messenger crashed into Mercury.
On purpose.
Messenger hit the planet going 12 times the speed of sound with the force of a semi-truck
going 300 mph (483kph), and will leave a crater the width of a basketball court.
Every month or two, Mercury is hit by a meteor about the same size as Messenger, going 10
times as fast; so it's not going to do real damage.
Messenger was out of fuel, and was literally flying on fumes -- compressed helium which
wasn't designed to alter its course had been MacGuyvered into the task to extend the science
just a BIT longer.
But can you really learn something just by crashing into a thing?
Apparently, yes!
In this case, we won't know for a bitbut the crash might provide insight into what's beneath
the surface of the planet, someday.
This isn't the first probe crash by any means.
Accidents DO happen, like in 1966, when humans made their first physical contact with another
planet as Russian probe Venera 3 crashed into Venus.
It was supposed to land and measure the atmosphere.
But mostly, crashes are purposeful.
Like when NASA purposely crashed SkyLab in 1979, or in 2003, when Jupiter's Galileo probe
purposely crashed into our largest planet after a 14 year mission.
Long before Galileo's crash, it released a smaller probe which flew into the atmosphere
to test it for speed, composition, density and temperature.
When Galileo hit those clouds the friction burned her up and the gravity and density
crushed her -- but they did it on purpose.
Galileo had learned there might be underground salt water oceans on Europa!
And if they simply allowed the spacecraft to orbit Jupiter, it could crash into those
oceans, contaminating them with Earth bacteria.
That would be horrible, so instead they intentionally crashed it; and now are designing a potential
Europa mission to explore those oceans.
In 2005, NASA crashed into comet Tempel 1 with a washing-machine sized probe named Deep
Impact.
They hit at 37-thousand kilometers per hour watching from an orbiter nearby to capture
the science coming out of the probe.
The scientists wanted to get "under the skin" of a comet and see what they're made of.
The impact was quote "bigger than expected…
it was like a mosquito hitting a 747."
This whole mission had to be a string of "that's what she saids."
They spent months analyzing the data from the crash, and were able to take pictures
of the comet as the tiny probe smashed into its surface.
Missions like this likely informed the Rosetta/Philae comet mission from last year!
And most recently, LADEE, and GRAIL's Ebb and Flow have all crashed into the Moon.
While the crashes themselves don't always teach us much, you can't get data from a dead
probe, after all.
So why do we crash them?
We can learn by watching the explosions, studying the craters and tracking the results.
Physics has rules, and the more controlled variables we have in a crash the more we can
learn.
Personally, I think there's some theatrical ovation to crashing a probe.
Voyager is doomed to fly forever, as a space-borne time capsule to humanity, but for other, smaller
probes… crashing is a way of saying, thank you for the knowledge you've given, now let's
blow you up in spectacular fashion!
It seems a fitting and very final end for any mission.
What do you think?
Should we make all our space probes crash?
If you could do anything with these multi-million-dollar science projects, what would you do?
And if you want to know more about expensive science projects, did you know there have
been over 90 space telescopes launched!
Why so many?
Check out this episode of DNews to find out.
While you're at it, subscribe so you get even more videos, and thanks for watching.