NASA craft to pass close to Mercury
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A NASA spacecraft will fly by the planet Mercury today, the first visit to the sun’s closest neighbor since the 1970s.
The space probe Messenger will skim 124 miles above the planet’s surface, the first of three passes before it settles into orbit three years from now.
Scientists are hoping that what they learn will help them begin to answer lingering questions about the planet’s origin, magnetic field and atmosphere, and what that means about Earth.
NASA plans to release images and results from the probe, which is operated by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, on Jan. 30.
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