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MESSENGER Launch 4
The top of the Boeing Delta
II rocket with its MESSENGER spacecraft on top breaks through
the billows of smoke below as it lifts off on August 3, 2004,
at 2:15:56 a.m. EDT from Launch Pad 17-B, Cape Canaveral Air
Force Station. MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment,
GEochemistry, and Ranging) is on a seven-year, 4.9-billion-mile
journey to the planet Mercury. The spacecraft will fly by Earth,
Venus and Mercury several times, as well as circle the Sun
15 times, to burn off energy before making its final approach
to the inner planet on March 18, 2011. MESSENGER was built for
NASA by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
in Laurel, Md.
Credit: National Aeronautics
and Space Administration or NASA
