{"id":1569,"date":"2015-04-30T21:00:31","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T21:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/?p=1569"},"modified":"2022-04-13T15:57:45","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T14:57:45","slug":"pythagorean-astronomy-end-of-the-messenger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/2015\/04\/30\/pythagorean-astronomy-end-of-the-messenger\/","title":{"rendered":"Pythagorean Astronomy: End of the Messenger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Messenger probe arrived in orbit around Mercury in March 2011, after a 7 year journey to the innermost planet in our Solar System. It mapped the entire surface of this tiny planet, of which we&#8217;d seen less than half from the previous mission back in the 1970s. Far from being a dry, inert ball of rock, Messenger has showed that the surface of Mercury has been changing in the very recent past (where &#8220;recent&#8221;, to a planetary scientist, means tens of millions of years). But what goes up, must come down, and on 30th April 2015 the Messenger probe crashed into the surface of Mercury.<\/p>\n<p>Professor Dave Rothery is a planetary scientist at the Open University, and a member of the Bepi Columbo mission, which will launch in a few years to arrive at Mercury in a decade&#8217;s time. In this month&#8217;s programme, Dave describes the mysteries that Messenger has solved, but also those that remain for Bepi Columbo to solve.<\/p>\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-1569-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/astrog80.astro.cf.ac.uk\/pythagoras-trousers\/mp3\/Apr2015_full_PHYSX.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/astrog80.astro.cf.ac.uk\/pythagoras-trousers\/mp3\/Apr2015_full_PHYSX.mp3\">http:\/\/astrog80.astro.cf.ac.uk\/pythagoras-trousers\/mp3\/Apr2015_full_PHYSX.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p>Originally broadcast (in edited form) on 30th April\u00a02015 as part of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rhysphillips.co.uk\/pythagoras-trousers\/\">Pythagoras&#8217; Trousers<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.radiocardiff.org\/\">Radio Cardiff<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Messenger probe arrived in orbit around Mercury in March 2011, after a 7 year journey to the innermost planet in our Solar System. It mapped the entire surface of this tiny planet, of which we&#8217;d seen less than half from the previous mission back in the 1970s. Far from being a dry, inert ball<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":273,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,30,32,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy-2","category-media","category-pythagorean-astronomy","category-radio-and-podcasts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hmOz-pj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/273"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1569"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1571,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569\/revisions\/1571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}