MESSENGER/FIPS

The Fast Imaging Plasma Spectrometer (FIPS) instrument on MESSENGER is
part of the Engergetic Particle and Plasma Spectrometer (EPPS). FIPS
measures particle count rates, energy distributions, velocity vector
distributions, and mass spectra at a high time resolution (64s) and
between 50 eV/e and 20 keV/e in energy. The instrument is a
time-of-flight mass spectrometer, pre-filtered with an electrostatic
analyzer.

MESSENGER spacecraft was launched on August 3, 2004 aboard a Boeing
Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. MESSENGER is
the first spacecraft to visit planet Mercury since Mariner 10 in
1975. MESSENGER is working its way to Mercury Orbit Insertion (MOI) in March 2011, on a surprisingly complex trajectory which includes flybys of Earth, Venus and Mercury itself (3 times).