On next Monday Nasa’s spacecraft is going to do a historic flyby of planet Mercury in 200 kilometers above the surface of Mercury. This is a historic moment because we have not studied Mercury this close since 1975 when Mariner 10 took pictures of Mercury.

Nasa’s Alan Stern, an associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, is excited about this. He says “this is raw scientific exploration and the suspense is building by the day”. “What will Messenger show us”, says Stern.

The main reason for the flyby is to use Mercury’s gravity assist to keep the spacecraft on track for its March 2011 orbit insertion. This slows down the speed of the spacecraft, which is needed to keep the spacecraft staying in the solar system.

Messenger was launched in August 2004 and it has flown once by Earth and twice by Venus. Next time the spacecraft will repeat flyby is on next August 2007 and September 2009. In 2011 Messenger will start orbiting the planet.

Read more about this interesting news in Nasa’s website.