Today in outer space! 30 April 2015: A MESSENGER spaceship crashes on Mercury.

On 30 April 2015, NASA's MESSENGER mission to Mercury ended when the craft intentionally crashed on the surface of the small rock planet.

MESSENGER was the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury and the second to look closely at it after NASA's Mariner 10 flew over the planet in the 1970s. MESSENGER has been in orbit around Mercury for four years. Meanwhile, he mapped Mercury's surface with unparalleled detail.

The mission discovered water ice and organic compounds surrounding the North Pole of Mercury. He also found that Mercury has a strange shifted magnetic field that is not aligned with its rotation axis.

The mission was supposed to last only one year, but NASA extended it two times to continue its revolutionary observations of Mercury. Eventually, he ran out of fuel, so NASA accidentally smashed him onto Mercury, where he created a new crater.