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Unravel the mystery behind Mercury.
November 3, 1973.
The spacecraft Mariner 10 set
out to see what it could learn about Mercury.
It conducted three flybys of the closest planet to the sun.
The MESSENGER spacecraft has traveled 4.9 billion miles.
MESSENGER was launched in August of 2004 and has been going
on its way to Mercury ever since.
On March 17, MESSENGER will fire its main engines for 14 minutes
and if everything goes right it will go
into orbit around Mercury.
Mercury is the least studied
of all the planets in the solar system.
Certainly the least studied of the four terrestrial planets:
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
Mercury has some similarities, it has a magnetic field,
which Venus and Mars do not, but it doesn't have an atmosphere,
which Venus and Mars do have.
So, there are similarities and there are differences
and we can try and understand the terrestrial planets better
by studying all four of them and trying
to ultimately understand better about the Earth.
Hey be sure to tell your teacher
to visit NASA Explorer Schools' Virtual Campus.
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