Maryland MESSENGER

I penned this post last Wednesday, 16 January, and meant to post, but then got interrupted and busy. Here it is finally.

Everyone likes to make fun of their employer. We've all experienced bonehead managers, capricious decisions, and lazy colleagues at one time or another. And I suppose like most employers, mine can have its issues. But most of the time APL is a great place to work.

And sometimes what we do is really, really cool.

Take Monday, for instance. A spacecraft designed and built by APL - MESSENGER - flew around the back side of the planet Mercury. You know... the planet with one side always facing the sun? The side we never see? The side of Mercury no one has ever seen before? While it was there, our spacecraft took a few photos and sent them back to MESSENGER Mission Control, only a couple of hundred yards from where I sit. The picture here was taken at a distance of 27,000 km. Yeah, I know, Mercury kind of looks like the Moon. But the environment that close to the Sun is quite hostile and it takes some pretty smart people to design, engineer, and control a space vehicle where one has no place being.

Now I want to make clear that I have nothing to do with MESSENGER. I work in a different building in a different department on different things. A bunch of engineers and managers a whole lot smarter than me deserve all the accolades.

For now, MESSENGER is heading back out into the solar system for a while before finally returning to orbit Mercury in a few years. Expect more pictures, experiments, and data.

You can find out more about MESSENGER here.
K-