Intro music.
The Rovers are making unbelievable discoveries on Mars, Cassini is sending back amazing pictures from Saturn,
but NASA's planetary exploration program is just getting started.
On August 2nd, MESSENGER will head for Mercury.
MESSENGER is very similar to the Cassini mission. The spacecraft will launch from Cape Canaveral,
and after a lengthy trip through the inner solar system, engineers will fire onboard rockets, and put it into orbit around the planet closest to the Sun.
Mercury can tell us a lot about how the Earth was formed. Both Earth and Mercury are "terrestrial," which means they're made of dense rock.
But Mercury is very different, and much denser than any of the other terrestrial planets.
Finding out what kind of rock Mercury is made of will help us understand how it was formed.
The more we know about the formation of the solar system, the more we understand about the origins of life on Earth.
Right now MESSENGER is undergoing final launch preparations in sunny Florida near the Kennedy Space Center.
The spacecraft was fueled on July 1st,
and around the same time, Boeing workers at the launch pad were beginning final assembly of the Delta II rocket that will carry MESSENGER into space.
Questions about the MESSENGER mission? Log on to NASA Direct! and we'll give you the answers during our live MESSENGER webcasts.