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Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 108

Maybe this needs clarification - the probe was not "deorbited" i.e. deliberately smashed into Mercury in a controlled manner. They did all they could to keep it up in orbit as long as possible, but the fuel finally ran out and its orbit inevitably decayed and it finally impacted today.

Now fully out of fuel, the spacecraft smashed into a region near Mercury's north pole, out of sight from Earth, at about 20:00 GMT on Thursday.

That, to me, is the really sad part. They should have reserved enough fuel to deliberately crash it so that the impact could be seen and analyzed.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 108

Blast it away from Mercury for what purpose? What else are you going to study out there? Mercury doesn't have any moons. There's nothing Sunward, and not enough thrust do climb away from the Sun to anywhere else - even if you could break out of Mercury's gravitational pull. The instruments were purpose built to study the surface of Mercury, so they're not going to register anything meaningful if you do break out of orbit.

So I ask you, why blast away from Mercury? What are you going to accomplish?

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