{"id":36302,"date":"2011-06-19T15:46:50","date_gmt":"2011-06-19T15:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/hot-stuff\/"},"modified":"2011-06-19T15:46:50","modified_gmt":"2011-06-19T15:46:50","slug":"hot-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/hot-stuff.php","title":{"rendered":"Hot Stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><a href=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/5a245_messenger061511.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/5a245_messenger061511.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"494\" height=\"497\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><p>A look by Messenger at the crater called Verdi on Mercury.  The crater is 90 miles (145 km) in diameter.  Click for larger.  Credit: NASA\/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory\/Carnegie Institution of Washington<\/p><\/div><p>&nbsp;<\/p><p>The Messenger spacecraft has entered one of the &ldquo;hot periods&rdquo; in its mission.<\/p><p>Mercury is quite interesting for a number of reasons and one of them is that it has the most eccentric orbit of any in the solar system.&nbsp; The distance between Mercury and the Sun varies from 43.7 million miles to 28.8 million miles over the 88 day orbit.&nbsp; The closer Mercury is to the Sun it stands to reason the hotter the temperatures the planet and the orbiting spacecraft get.&nbsp; Just to be clear, the distance the Earth varies in its orbit is not enough to make a difference in our temperatures and it is the tilt that is responsible for the seasons.<\/p><p>Anyways, Mercury and Messenger reached their closest point to the Sun just a few days ago.&nbsp; Mercury does have a sunshade and the temperatures on that shade device are 350<sup>o<\/sup>C or how about 660<sup>o<\/sup>F!&nbsp; The spacecraft spends about an hour on the sunlit side and then travels about the same time on the dark side of the planet where temps can plunge to <sup>-<\/sup>172<sup>o<\/sup>C or <sup>-<\/sup>279<sup>o<\/sup>F.&nbsp; It is quite a feat to keep Messenger going.<\/p><p>Tomorrow hopefully we will get some early science data from Messenger at a news conference.&nbsp; Fingers crossed.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A look by Messenger at the crater called Verdi on Mercury. The crater is 90 miles (145 km) in diameter. Click for larger. Credit: NASA\/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory\/Carnegie Institution of Washington&nbsp;The Messenger spacecraft has entered one of the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/hot-stuff.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36302"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}