Planet Mercury craters named after Diego Rivera, Umm Kulthum, other artists

This video from the USA says about itself:

27 April 2015

The robotic spacecraft MESSENGER has run out of fuel. With no way to make major adjustments to its orbit around the planet Mercury, the probe will smash into the surface at more than 8,750 miles per hour (3.91 kilometers per second). The impact will add a new crater to the planet’s scarred face that engineers estimate will be as wide as 52 feet (16 meters).

From NASA in the USA:

April 29, 2015

Mercury Crater-Naming Contest Winners Announced

The MESSENGER Education and Public Outreach (EPO) Team, coordinated through the Carnegie Institution for Science, announces the winning names from its competition to name five impact craters on Mercury. The contest submissions had to be submitted by January 15, 2015, and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) — the governing body of planetary and satellite nomenclature since 1919 — made the selections from a semi-final submission of 17 artists’ names. The newly selected crater names are Carolan, Enheduanna, Karsh, Kulthum, and Rivera.

Under IAU rules, all new craters on Mercury must be named after an artist, composer, or writer who was famous for more than 50 years and has been dead for more than three years.

Turlough O’Carolan (Carolan), was an Irish composer during the late 1600s and early 1700s.

This music video features Turlough O’Carolan’s composition Planxty Irwin.

Enheduanna, an Akkadian princess who lived in the Sumerian city of Ur in ancient Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq and Kuwait), and is regarded by many scholars as possibly the earliest known author and poet.

This video is about Enheduanna.

Yousuf Karsh, was an Armenian/Canadian and one of the greatest portrait photographers of the twentieth century.

This video is called Profile of Photographer Yousuf Karsh.

Umm Kulthum, was an Egyptian singer, songwriter, and film actress of the 1920s to the 1970s.

This music video is called Umm Kulthum ( أم كلثوم ) live; “Enta Omri” (English subtitles). At the Olympia Théâtre in Paris, November 1967.

Diego Rivera, was a prominent Mexican painter and muralist from the 1920s to the 1950s.

This video is called Tribute to Diego Rivera.

NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft has been in orbit about Mercury since March 2011 and is due to finally impact the planet tomorrow. The MESSENGER spacecraft has far surpassed expectations in the duration of the mission and in the quantity and quality of data returned. The original goal of the craft was to take 2,500 images of the planet, but is has returned more than 250,000. The EPO team organized the crater-naming competition to celebrate the mission’s achievements.

The winners come from many different countries. Carolan was suggested by Fergal Donnelly (Belgium), Joseph Brusseau (USA), and Reane Morrison (USA). Enheduanna was submitted by Gagan Toor (India). Karsh was submitted by Elizabeth Freeman Rosenzweig (USA). Kulthum was suggested by Malouk Ba-Isa (Saudi Arabia), Riana Rakotoarimanan (Switzerland), Yehya Hassouna (USA), David Suttles (USA), Thorayya Said Giovanelli (USA), and Matt Giovanelli (USA). Rivera was suggested by Ricardo Martinez (Mexico), Rebecca Hare (USA), Arturo Gutierrez (Mexico), and Jose Martinez (USA).

Julie Edmonds, the EPO team leader at the Carnegie Institution for Science, remarked, “The IAU working group that chose the names was very happy with the submissions. In all we had 3,600 contest entries, a resounding success for the excitement that the MESSENGER mission to Mercury has generated.”

Final Maneuver Extends MESSENGER Operations by One More Orbit

MESSENGER mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., conducted a maneuver on April 28 designed to raise the spacecraft’s minimum altitude sufficiently to ensure impact onto Mercury during the desired orbit when full coverage by NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) scheduled.

The previous maneuver, completed on April 24, raised MESSENGER’s minimum altitude from 8.3 kilometers (5.2 miles) to 18.2 kilometers (11.3 miles) above the planet’s surface. Because of progressive changes to the orbit over time, however, the spacecraft’s minimum altitude continued to decrease.

At the time of this most recent maneuver, MESSENGER was in an orbit with a closest approach of 5.3 kilometers (3.3 miles) above the surface of Mercury. With a velocity change of 0.45 meters per second (1 mile per hour), the spacecraft’s four largest monopropellant thrusters released gaseous helium pressurant to nudge the spacecraft to an orbit with a closest approach altitude of 6.3 kilometers (3.9 miles).

This maneuver also increased the spacecraft’s speed relative to Mercury near the maximum distance from Mercury, adding about 3.5 seconds to the spacecraft’s eight-hour, 21.2-minute orbit period. The final maneuver in the MESSENGER low-altitude hover campaign, this was the mission’s fourth course-correction maneuver to use the helium gas pressurant as a propellant to change the spacecraft’s orbit. This view shows MESSENGER’s orientation at the start of the maneuver.

MESSENGER was 155.2 million kilometers (96.5 million miles) from Earth when the 3.02-minute maneuver began at about 5:20 p.m. EDT. Mission controllers at APL verified the start of the maneuver 8.6 minutes later, after the first signals indicating spacecraft thruster activity reached NASA’s DSN tracking station in Goldstone, California.

MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) is a NASA-sponsored scientific investigation of the planet Mercury and the first space mission designed to orbit the planet closest to the Sun. The MESSENGER spacecraft was launched on August 3, 2004, and entered orbit about Mercury on March 18, 2011, to begin a yearlong study of its target planet. MESSENGER’s first extended mission began on March 18, 2012, and ended one year later. MESSENGER is now in a second extended mission, which is scheduled to operate through April 2015.