MESSENGER Aims for May Launch Date

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_roo..._10_21_03.html

MESSENGER Mission News
October 21, 2003

MESSENGER Aims for May Launch Date

The first mission designed to orbit the planet Mercury is working
toward a launch in May 2004.

MESSENGER was originally scheduled to lift off next March. In late
August, however, mission managers recommended to NASA that MESSENGER
aim for its backup launch date, after late deliveries of key
subsystems and greater-than-expected technical difficulties had
affected the spacecraft's assembly and testing schedule. NASA recently
concurred with the recommendation.

"A May launch date allows us to put MESSENGER through a full series of
rigorous prelaunch tests and simulations," says Dr. Sean C. Solomon,
MESSENGER's Principal Investigator, from the Carnegie Institution of
Washington. "The mission's science plans for Mercury remain unchanged,
and our team looks forward to exploring as planned the least
understood planet in the inner solar system."

MESSENGER's mission profile includes a 12-day launch window that opens
May 11, 2004; three flybys of Venus and two flybys of Mercury; and a
yearlong orbital study of Mercury that starts in July 2009 - three
months later than the original arrival date. Details of MESSENGER's
mission design are available on the MESSENGER Web site.

A backup launch opportunity also exists in late July-early August
2004.

Spacecraft assembly is nearing completion at The Johns Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., with the
expectation that prelaunch space-environment testing will begin at
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. Md., by late
December. Final preparations for launch are set to begin at Kennedy
Space Center/Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., in early March
2004.