Latest on: Nasa Messenger
NASA’s MESSENGER mission was designed to understand the forces that have shaped the planet Mercury.
The spacecraft is designed to fly past Mercury three times before settling into orbit.
Mariner 10 was not able to photograph Mercury ’s entire surface, and the images it did send back raised many questions.
And Mercury has shrunk in on itself more than previously suspected.
“By combining Mariner 10 and MESSENGER data, the science team was able to reconstruct a comprehensive geologic history of the entire Caloris basin interior,” says James Head of Brown University, lead author of one of the Science reports.
NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
Mercury is the least-explored of the terrestrial planets.
These are just a few of the new discoveries by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, which flew past Mercury on January 14, 2008.
NASA’s MESSENGER set to become the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury launched today at 2:15:56 a.m.
NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft is returning to Mercury.
The mission is the first to visit Mercury in over 30 years; the only previous probe to visit Mercury was Mariner 10, which completed its mission in March 1975.
MESSENGER has been built for NASA by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
Explanation: Two days ago, the MESSENGER spacecraft became only the second spacecraft in human history to swoop past Mercury.
During years of high solar activity the sun develops a thin “cantaloupe skin” that significantly increases its apparent oblateness.
MESSENGER will map the surface composition, study the magnetic field and interior structure of our solar system’s smallest and innermost planet Mercury.
The MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging probe is a NASA spacecraft, launched August 3, 2004 to study the characteristics and environment of Mercury from orbit.
Six of the papers in Science report studies of the planet’s surface-its colors, mineralogy, and the shape of its terrain.
The above image was taken two days ago during MESSENGER’s flyby and shows part of Mercury’s surface that has never been imaged in detail before.
MESSENGER made its first flyby of Venus at 08:34 UTC on October 24, 2006 at an altitude of 2,992 kilometers.
Over the next few years MESSENGER will swing past twice more and finally enter Mercury’s orbit in 2011.
