5. Mission to Mercury

Mission to Mercury - nyt, March 18, 2011

In the middle of March this year first ever man-made object, a spacecraft called Messenger, has slipped into an orbit around Mercury. The craft travelled to Mercury for seven years over the distance of 5 billion miles. The scientists, controlling the spacecraft, are starting to turn on its instruments. The observations are to begin on April 4th. Mercury is the planet closest to Sun in the Solar system, so the temperatures Messenger must be able to withstand are very high, this is why it will be protected by ceramic-fabric sunshade.

I think this article shows clearly that human scientific interests are expanding slowly but surely to the most extreme places in the universe. Engineers find the right materials to protect scientific instruments from the Sun even at the close distance like just 46 million miles. The temperature on the surface of this planed is around 500°C, so we should expect Messenger to quickly reach this temperature if left unprotected.