MESSENGER... Getting into the Swing

Hello All

Today MESSENGER successfully made its first swing by Mercury. Mercury is as alien a world to us as any  we really only know a large  amount about our planet and our red neighbor, Mars. We probably know more about the Jovian planets than Mercury. As close as it is to the sun  it's an incredibly hard study. 

This maneuver is part of slowing-down to do long term studies of the planet.  It's also our first look at the planet in over three decades. Believe it or not  even a brief flyby like this will yield some important scientific data.  It's going to take a lot more fly-bys and several years to compete the mission and the study, this is one more step along the way... a big one, though!

I'm proud that Wind River was able to help empower the MESSENGER team to achieve this goal  and I hope they don't mind us helping spread the word...