MESSENGER On Autopilot for Orbit Insertion

MESSENGER is now on autopilot, faithfully executing a detailed set of instructions required to achieve its historic rendezvous with Mercury tomorrow night.

At 8 a.m. Tuesday, all attitude re-orientations planned to control the probe's momentum accumulation and adjust its trajectory were successfully completed. MESSENGER turned to point its high-gain antenna back to Earth for the final stretch of continuous data monitoring until just before the start of Mercury orbit insertion.

The operations team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), in Laurel, Md., has monitored on-board commanded vehicle re-configurations and has sent pre-defined ground commands to establish configurations for the burn.