NASA’s MESSENGER probe crashes on Mercury after successful 11-year mission

A NASA probe has crashed into Mercury at 14,000 kilometres an hour — creating an impact crater 15 metres wide — after running out of fuel.

An UNMANNED NASA spacecraft has crashed on the surface of the planet Mercury, after it ran out of fuel following a successful 11-year mission, the US space agency says.

The MESSENGER probe — short for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging — was the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, and issued a final farewell on Twitter shortly before its demise at 5.26am AEST.

“Well, I guess it’s time to say goodbye to all my friends, family, support team. I will be making my final impact very soon.”

Shortly after, the official @MESSENGER2011 Twitter account posted another image of Mercury’s surface, with the caption: “MESSENGER’s LAST ACT? THAT’S SMASHING!”

#thatsmessenger pic.twitter.com/NPK4zqtNPM

— MESSENGER (@MESSENGER2011) April 30, 2015

The image was not of Mercury’s fall.

NASA has said previously that there could be no real-time pictures of the impact, which would take place on the side of the planet facing away from the Earth.

But the US space agency confirmed that the probe had indeed crash-landed.

“A NASA planetary exploration mission came to a planned, but nonetheless dramatic, end Thursday when it slammed into Mercury’s surface at about 3.91 kilometres per second and created a new crater on the planet’s surface,” the agency said in a statement.

The spacecraft itself was just about three metres long.

Before ... Technicians with The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Titusville, Florida prepare the MESSESNGER spacecraft for a move to a hazardous processing facility in preparation for loading the spacecraft's hypergolic propellants. Pic: NASA via AP

Flight controllers managed to keep the spacecraft going in recent weeks by using helium gas not originally intended as fuel. But now the gas is gone and gravity is tugging.

The mission, which launched in 2004, had achieved “unprecedented success”, with its top discovery being that Mercury had lots of frozen water and other volatile materials in its permanently shadowed polar craters on the planet closest to the Sun, the US space agency said.

Messenger became the first spacecraft to orbit hot, little Mercury, in 2011. Since then, it’s circled the solar system’s innermost planet 4,104 times and collected more than 270,000 images.

The only other spacecraft to visit Mercury was NASA’s Mariner 10 back in the 1970s, but that was a fly-by mission.

The spacecraft’s final tweet read:

“On behalf of MESSENGER, thank you all for your support. We will continue to update you on our great discoveries. We will miss it.”

MESSENGER by the numbers. pic.twitter.com/7BsMMs0z6v

— MESSENGER (@MESSENGER2011) April 30, 2015