MESSENGER
LocationMercury orbit
Year2004
SizeCeramic sunshade
TypePlanetary orbiter
About MESSENGER
The first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, arriving in March 2011. Shielded from the Sun by a ceramic cloth sunshade. Found water ice in permanently shadowed craters near the poles. Mapped the entire planet. Crashed into Mercury in April 2015 after running out of propellant.
Related Satellites
Cassini-Huygens
Orbited Saturn for 13 years. The Huygens probe landed on Titan in 2005, the first landing in the out...
Juno
Studying Jupiter since 2016. Orbits over the poles in highly elliptical paths. Discovered that Jupit...
Galileo Spacecraft
The first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter, arriving in December 1995. Dropped a probe into the atmospher...
Magellan
Mapped about 98 percent of the surface of Venus with radar. Launched from the Space Shuttle Atlantis...