Showing posts with label Mercury. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mercury. Show all posts

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Mercury - Mariner 10, Messenger


We just learned about the space travel to Venus on the space crafts Venera 7-16, Mariner 10, Pioneer Venus

We have sent space crafts to study Mercury through the years, but it's difficult because it is closer to the sun.

The first space craft that was sent up was Mariner 10 on November 2nd, 1973.
It was sent mostly just to fly by Mercury and study the sky and look at the land.

The next space craft was called Messenger, launched August 3rd, 2004.
The letters in the name stand for: MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, Ranging.

It took almost 7 years for it to get to Mercury, and it orbited the planet for 2 years taking pictures.
It took close to 100,000 pictures of the whole planet!
mercury messenger
(from: wikipedia - messenger)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Yellow Dwarf

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Planet Mercury


We just learned about ISS - International Space Station.

We know that to remember the eight planets in our solar system we can remember the words:
My very educated mother just served us nachos.

The My in that sentence is for the planet Mercury.
mercury
(from: wikipedia - mercury (planet)

Mercury is the closest planet to the sun,
and it's also the smallest of all the eight planets.

Earth orbits around the sun every year, which is 365 days.
Mercury's orbit or year is only 88 days!

The planet has very strange days too.
It takes two whole Mercury years for it to finish one whole day and night.

That means it's daytime and sunny for a whole 88 days (3 months!)
and then totally dark for another 88 days.