(FEBRUARY 1, 2008) — A picture is worth a thousand words.
To NASA scientists, it’s worth even more when you’re talking about Mercury. A recent flyby of the planet by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft shows a unique world with huge cliffs, impact craters and other formations never-before-seen.
After a 3.5-year journey of more than 2 billion miles, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft made its first flyby of the planet January 14. NASA held a press conference January 30 to announce its findings and release images.
The spacecraft's cameras and instruments collected more than 1,200 images and took the first up-close measurements of Mercury since the Mariner 10 spacecraft's third and final flyby on March 16, 1975.
"This flyby allowed us to see a part of the planet never before viewed by spacecraft, and our little craft has returned a gold mine of exciting data," said Sean Solomon, MESSENGER's principal investigator.
From the previous flybys, scientists had thought Mercury had characteristics similar to those of Earth’s moon. But unlike the moon, MESSENGER showed that Mercury has huge cliffs with structures snaking up hundreds of miles across the planet's face. These cliffs preserve a record of patterns of fault activity from early in the planet's history. The spacecraft also revealed impact craters very different from lunar craters.
The spacecraft also discovered a feature scientists call "The Spider." Such a formation never has been seen on Mercury or the moon before. It lies in the middle of a large impact crater called the Caloris basin, now thought to be as large as 960 miles from rim to rim, and consists of more than 100 narrow, flat-floored troughs radiating from a complex central region.
The magnetosphere and magnetic field of Mercury during the flyby appeared to be different from the Mariner 10 observations.
"We should keep this treasure trove of data in perspective," said project scientist Ralph McNutt of the Applied Physics Laboratory. "With two flybys to come and an intensive orbital mission to follow, we are just getting started to go where no one has been before."
MESSENGER will fly by Mercury two additional times during the mission, in October 2008 and September 2009. In March 2011, MESSENGER will enter into an orbit around Mercury and begin a yearlong scientific investigation of the planet.
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This picture of a double–ring crater on Mercury was taken by MESSENGER. The crater appears to be filled with smooth plains material that may be volcanic in nature. Credit: NASA
MESSENGER took this photo of Mercury as it was departing. Source: NASA
A first look at Mercury’s previously unseen side, as photographed by MESSENGER. Credit: NASA
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