Published: April 29, 2015

Audio Script

Spacecraft with CU-Boulder instrument to crash into Mercury
April 30, 2015ΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύΜύ Greg Holsclaw
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When NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft runs out of fuel and crashes into Mercury today at around 1:30 p.m. mountain time, CU-Boulder planetary scientist Greg Holsclaw will not only be thinking about how wildly successful the mission has been, but that he’s experienced it firsthand from the very beginning.
CUT 1 β€œI came to Colorado for graduate school. It was the year 2000 that I was approached shortly after the MESSENGER Mission was selected to work on the instrument that was developed here at the university. It was a very exciting proposition to be able to start working from a concept all the way through development and analysis of flight data. (:22) It’s an incredible feeling to think about this instrument that I touched and helped put together and assemble and calibrate is now coming to an end.” (:31)
Holsclaw was part of the technical team at CU-Boulder that built one of seven instruments that flew aboard the spacecraft. He says the information gathered by all of the instruments have shed new light on Mercury.
CUT 2 β€œThere were many new discoveries made and it was quite an adventure. I think the most interesting one was the discovery of these geologic features called β€œthe hollows.” And there are bright features inside of impact craters and the thought is that they’re related to a sublimation process where a solid turns directly into a gas. And they’re most interesting because there might be active geologic features on the surface today.” (:28)
MESSNGER also provided additional data supporting evidence gathered on Earth that Mercury’s polar regions might have ice on them.
CUT 3 β€œThere are craters in the polar regions that have permanent shadows. They’re areas where the sun doesn’t shine and they’re very cold. (:08) And there have been measurements from the Earth, radar measurements, that have shown that there are bright areas associated with these areas and MESSENGER has provided additional evidence that these materials could indeed be water – ice, perhaps delivered by comets.” (:25)
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The $8.7 million instrument Holsclaw worked on is called the Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer, or MASCS. He says even though the orbital mission has ended he and the other scientists involved with MESSENGER will be busy in the near future analyzing all the data that was gathered.
CUT 4 β€œWe’re quite overwhelmed by the volume of data that we have and we’ll spend another year on the project archiving that data, making it available to the public, and also continuing our analysis.” (:11)
Only one other spacecraft, NASA’s Mariner 10, has visited Mercury - in 1974 and 1975. The MESSENGER mission began in 2004, when the spacecraft launched from Florida on a seven year, 4.9 billion mile journey that involved 15 loops around the sun before the spacecraft settled in Mercury’s orbit in March 2011.
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