NASA’s Mercury probe Messenger suffered a glitch during its third and final fly-by of the planet yesterday, meaning it was unable to collect all the data researchers had hoped for.

The probe’s mission team are being upbeat about the flyby though, saying Messenger did gain the vital gravity assist it needs to enter orbit around Mercury in 2011.

“With more than 90 percent of the planet’s surface already imaged, Messenger’s science team had drafted an ambitious observation campaign designed to tease out additional details from features uncovered during the first two flybys,” says a statement. “But an unexpected signal loss prior to closest approach hampered those plans.”

Apparently, a glitch in the probe’s power systems tripped a fault management system and the spacecraft went into safe mode. Messenger still managed to grab data on its approach to the planet, says Eric Finnegan of the Johns Hopkins University.

Everything now appears to be back to normal on board.

Of course, things being what they are, Messenger has its own first-person twitter feed, where it noted, “Just in case you were wondering, I’m OK. There was a slight hiccup, but I’m doing well. All of my data has been downloaded.”

Images (left to right): four days out, 55 hours out, 44 hours out, uh oh! All images: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington except blue screen of death, via Wikipedia