The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has released an impressive new set of images of Mercury, the rocky planet closest to the Sun. The images were obtained by the MESSENGER satellite on a flyby of the planet last week.
The images include never-before-seen cliffs and craters, as well as a detailed false-color rendering of Mercury's surface. Almost 95 percent of the planet has now been imaged - much of it for the first time in this recent mission.
MESSENGER, the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging satellite, was largely designed and constructed by the Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. The acronym refers to Mercury's role in Greek mythology as the messenger of the gods.
The mission, launched on Aug. 3, 2004, is operated by scientists at APL and the Goddard Space Flight Center, a NASA facility in Greenbelt, Md.
The Oct. 6 flyby was the second of three planned swings past the planet. The satellite made its first approach in January 2008 and will pass by again in September 2009 before settling into a semi-permanent orbit around the planet in March 2011. On its way to Mercury, MESSENGER provided images of Venus as well.
One particularly impressive image from the set demonstrates a degree of detail that is not visible to the naked eye. By collecting light over a broader range of wavelengths, in regions that are infrared and ultraviolet and therefore not detected by the human eye, and then transforming these values into false color, scientists were able to appreciate the extent of fine variation on the Mercurian surface. This false-color image appears above.
Mercury appears much like Earth's moon, both to the naked eye and in a more detailed analysis. A variety of large craters and evidence of volcanic activity are visible in these images.
For the first time, scientists now have access to pictures of almost the entire surface of Mercury. A previous mission, Mariner 10, provided the first images during the 1970s. Data from both the first and second flybys are available at http://messenger.jhuapl.edu.
