One month ago, on January 14, 2008, MESSENGER became the first spacecraft
in over three decades to visit Mercury, snapping images of a large portion
of Mercury's surface previously unseen by spacecraft. As the spacecraft
proceeds on its journey, the science team continues to study the 1213
images returned from the mission's historic first flyby. The probe's
trajectory will bring it to a second Mercury flyby on October 6, 2008.
MESSENGER's Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System
(MDIS) captured this image during the flyby one month ago. The Sun is
illuminating this region at a low angle, accentuating the modest ridges
and other low topography on these nearly flat plains. Low ridges trend
from the top-center of the image to the left edge (white arrows). The
ghostly remains of craters are visible, filled to their rims by what may
have been volcanic lavas (red arrows). The faint remnant of an inner ring
within the large crater in the bottom half of this picture can be seen
(blue arrow); the area interior to this ring was also flooded, possibly by
lava, nearly to the point of disappearance. Clusters of secondary craters
on the floor of the large crater and elsewhere (yellow arrows) formed when
clumps of material were ejected from large impacts beyond the view of this
image, which is about 350 kilometers (220 miles) across.
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 108826972
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.
