On January 9, 2008, the MESSENGER spacecraft snapped one of its first
images of Mercury at a distance of about 2.7 million kilometers (1.7
million miles) from the planet. The image was acquired with the Narrow
Angle Camera, one half of MESSENGER's Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
instrument. Mercury is about 4880 kilometers (3030 miles) in diameter, and
this image has a resolution of about 70 kilometers/pixel (43 miles/pixel).
The MESSENGER spacecraft is fast approaching Mercury and will pass within
200 kilometers (124 miles) of the surface at 19:04:39 UTC (2:04:39 pm EST)
on January 14, 2008. During this close encounter, MESSENGER will gather
extensive scientific data about the planet, including measurements of
Mercury's magnetic field, observations of Mercury's thin atmosphere, and
images of the hemisphere of Mercury that has never before been viewed by a
spacecraft.
MESSENGER is only the second spacecraft to visit the planet Mercury; the
first was Mariner 10 in 1974. The data from MESSENGER's first encounter
with Mercury will help address key outstanding science questions about
this little known planet. The MESSENGER mission will have two additional
encounters with Mercury, in October 2008 and September 2009. All three
encounters with Mercury provide gravity assists to enable MESSENGER to
become the first spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury in March 2011.
Image acquired on January 9, 2008, 11:04 UTC.
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.
