MESSENGER Set for Mercury Flyby Oct. 6
On October 6, MESSENGER, NASA's spacecraft to Mercury, will perform its second flyby of the solar system's smallest planet. Passing only 124 miles over the planet's surface, the craft will use onboard equipment to observe 30% of Mercury's surface never before seen up close as well as to take magnetic field measurements from Mercury's western hemisphere.
Image produced by NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Arizona State University/Carnegie Institution of Washington. Image reproduced courtesy of Science/AAAS. |
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