A NASA probe called Messenger sent to study Mercury is set to crash onto the planet’s surface due to the fact that the craft is out of fuel. This highly explosive crash is calculated to happen on Thursday.

The craft reached the planet back in 2011 and is now out of fuel after lasting longer than expected. The gravitational pull from the planet will eventually drag the probe to its doom.

The good side to this sad ending for such a feat made by mankind is that the space probe has lasted longer than what scientists expected. The original mission was supposed to only last one year. Instead, the probe has last over four years and has outdone its mission.

Now, the craft is estimated to crash onto the planet’s surface at 20:46 BST on Thursday. It is reported to be losing altitude and will hit hard at 8,750 mph, which is three times faster than the speed of sound.

The only reason why the craft will hit the planet at such high speeds is due to the fact that Mercury has no atmosphere. Many space objects hit the planet about once a month or every other month, leaving craters all over the surface. As for Messenger, the craft will leave a crater as well, but it will be obliterated at the same time.

During its mission, the craft sent more than 270,000 images and 10 terabytes of scientific measurements. It changed the understanding of the planet with all the work that it did while orbiting the planet longer than expected, more than 3,000 times.

The craft has been making elliptical orbits around Mercury. When farthest from the planet, the craft needed a blast from the engine to come back and keep orbiting. Otherwise, the craft would have drifted towards the sun since Mercury is the closet planet to the star.

So, when the craft comes back around on Thursday from the farthest part of the orbit, the gravitational pull will drag it into the surface since the craft does not have enough strength to go back around and shoot out into space again. Scientist who worked on the craft are sad to see their creation meet its demise.

Messenger will say goodbye to its creators on Thursday by crashing onto Mercury’s surface. The scientists who made this possible have been waiting for this day for a long time now, longer than expected. In the end, the craft will leave a mark on Mercury’s surface to be remembered by.