Yesterday, at 4:40 am EDT, MESSENGER successfully completed its second
flyby of Mercury. Today, at about 1:50 am EDT, the images taken during the
flyby encounter began to be received back on Earth. The spectacular image
shown here is one of the first to be returned and shows a WAC image of the
departing planet taken about 90 minutes after the spacecraft’s closest
approach to Mercury. The bright crater just south of the center of the
image is Kuiper, identified on images from the Mariner 10 mission in the
1970s. For most of the terrain east of Kuiper, toward the limb (edge) of
the planet, the departing images are the first spacecraft views of that
portion of Mercury’s surface. A striking characteristic of this newly
imaged area is the large pattern of rays that extend from the northern
region of Mercury to regions south of Kuiper. This extensive ray system
appears to emanate from a relatively young crater newly imaged by
MESSENGER, providing a view of the planet distinctly unique from that
obtained during MESSENGER’s first flyby (see PIA10172). This young,
extensively rayed crater, along with the prominent rayed crater to the
southeast of Kuiper, near the limb of the planet, were both seen in
Earth-based radar images of Mercury but not previously imaged by
spacecraft. As the MESSENGER team is busy examining this newly obtained
view that is only a few hours old, data from the flyby continue to stream
down to Earth, including higher resolution close-up images of this
previously unseen terrain.
Date Acquired: October 6, 2008
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 131775256
Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
WAC Filter: 6 (430 nanometers)
Resolution: 5 kilometers/pixel (3 miles/pixel)
Scale: Mercury’s diameter is 4880 kilometers (3030 miles)
Spacecraft Altitude: 27,000 kilometers (17,000 miles)
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.