During its flyby of Mercury, the MESSENGER spacecraft acquired
high-resolution images of the planet's surface. This image, taken by the
Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) on the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), was
obtained on January 14, 2008, about 37 minutes after MESSENGER's closest
approach to the planet. The image reveals the surface of Mercury at a
resolution of about 360 meters/pixel (about 1180 feet/pixel), and the
width of the image is about 370 kilometers (about 230 miles). This image
is the 98th in a set of 99 images that were taken in a pattern of 9 rows
and 11 columns to enable the creation of a large, high-resolution mosaic
of the northeast quarter of the region not seen by Mariner 10. During the
encounter with Mercury, the MDIS instrument acquired image sets for seven
large mosaics with the NAC.
This image shows a crater with distinctive bright rays of ejected material
extending radially outward from the crater's center. A chain of craters
nearby is also visible. Studying impact craters provides insight into the
history and composition of Mercury as well as dynamical processes that
occurred throughout our Solar System. The MESSENGER Science Team has begun
analyzing these high-resolution images to unravel these fundamental
questions.
Mission Elapsed Time (MET) of image: 108827082
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.
