HONG KONG: The only spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury ended its four-year tour with a crash landing Thursday
NASA’s Messenger plunged from orbit as planned and slammed into the sun’s closest planet at about 8,750 miles an hour, creating a crater an estimated 52 feet across.
Messenger became the first spacecraft to orbit hot, little Mercury, in 2011. It circled the solar system’s innermost planet 4,105 times and collected more than 277,000 images.
“Today we bid a fond farewell to one of the most resilient and accomplished spacecraft ever to have explored our neighboring planets,” said lead scientist Sean Solomon, director of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
Dr. Solomon noted in a statement that Messenger set a record for planetary flybys—once past Earth, twice past Venus and three times past Mercury before entering Mercury’s orbit—and survived “both punishing heat and extreme doses of radiation” to surpass expectations.
Pakistan to get $3b loan from Islamic Trade Financing Corporation
ISLAMABAD: Islamic Trade Financing Corporation (ITFC) to provide Pakistan with a $3 billion loan, according to an official statement released...
