Mercury Missions
By: Prateek Kasliwal
Mariner 10
Mariner 10 was launched on November 3, 1973 to fly past Mercury. Its main objectives were to measure Mercury’s environment, atmosphere, and to capture images of their surface. The mission ended in March 1975. Mariner 10 is still orbiting the sun, even though its electronic systems have probably been destroyed by solar radiation.
MESSENGER
MESSENGER was NASA’s second mission to Mercury. It was launched on August 3, 2004 to study the planet, except this time it would be orbiting around Mercury to study its electronics fail. After this flight, the MESSENGER will go back to Mercury another 4 times, March 18, 2011 being the last flight.
Project Mercury
Began in 1958, completed in 1963, Project Mercury was the United States' first man in space program. The objectives of the program, which made six manned flights from 1961 to 1963, were....
To orbit a manned spacecraft around Earth
To investigate man's ability to function in space
To recover both man and spacecraft safely
The Mercury program used two launch vehicles. A Redstone for the suborbital and an Atlas for the four orbital flights.
Project Mercury Symbol
Spacecraft
This was one of the spacecrafts used in the Mercury Project.
Pilots
These were the seven people who flew the spacecrafts for the Mercury Project.
For the Mercury Project, there were six spacecrafts that carried human passengers and there were 20 test flights of the Mercury capsule and various boosters.
Spacecraft: $135.3 million
Launch vehicles: $82.9 million
Operations: $49.3 million
Tracking operations and equipment: $71.9 million
Facilities: $53.2 million