As the MESSENGER spacecraft drew closer to Mercury for its historic first
flyby, the spacecraft's Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) on the Mercury Dual
Imaging System (MDIS) acquired an image mosaic of the sunlit portion of
the planet. This image is one of those mosaic frames and was acquired on
January 14, 2008, 18:10 UTC, when the spacecraft was about 18,000
kilometers (11,000 miles) from the surface of Mercury, about 55 minutes
before MESSENGER's closest approach to the planet.
The image shows a variety of surface textures, including smooth plains at
the center of the image, many impact craters (some with central peaks),
and rough material that appears to have been ejected from the large crater
to the lower right. This large 200-kilometer-wide (about 120 miles) crater
was seen in less detail by Mariner 10 more than three decades ago and was
named Sholem Aleichem for the Yiddish writer. In this MESSENGER image, it
can be seen that the plains deposits filling the crater's interior have
been deformed by linear ridges. The shadowed area on the right of the
image is the day-night boundary, known as the terminator. Altogether,
MESSENGER acquired over 1200 images of Mercury, which the science team
members are now examining in detail to learn about the history and
evolution of the innermost planet.
Mission Elapsed Time (MET) of image: 108821596
These images are from MESSENGER, a NASA Discovery mission to conduct the
first orbital study of the innermost planet, Mercury. For information
regarding the use of images, see the MESSENGER image use policy.
