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Oct.
7, 2008: Yesterday, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft flew
past Mercury and photographed a broad swath of never-before-seen
terrain. The first of more than 1,200 high-resolution images
are arriving back at Earth now.
"The
MESSENGER team is extremely pleased by the superb performance
of the spacecraft and the payload," says MESSENGER Principal
Investigator Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
"We are now on the correct trajectory for eventual insertion
into orbit around Mercury, and all of our instruments returned
data as planned."
This
spectacular image – one of the first to be returned – was
snapped by the spacecraft's Wide Angle Camera (WAC) about
90 minutes after MESSENGER's closest approach to Mercury,
when the spacecraft was at a distance of about 27,000 kilometers
(about 17,000 miles):
Above:
New photographs of Mercury's unseen side reveal a dramatic
system of globe-straddling rays. [full
caption]
The
most striking characteristic of this newly imaged area is
the large pattern of rays streaking downward from the planet's
northern regions. The ray system appears to emanate from a
relatively young crater previously seen in Earth-based radar
images but photographed by a spacecraft for the very first
time just yesterday. This view of the planet is distinctly
unique from what
MESSENGER saw during its first flyby in Jan. 2008.
In
the mid-1970s when Mariner 10 flew past Mercury three times,
the probe imaged less than half the planet. MESSENGER's first
flyby in January of this year covered another 20 percent of
the planet's surface. Yesterday, Oct. 6th, MESSENGER successfully
completed its second flyby of Mercury, unveiling another 30
percent of Mercury's surface that had never before been seen
by spacecraft.
"When
these data have been digested and compared, we will have a
global perspective of Mercury for the first time," notes
Solomon.
Data
from the flyby continue to stream down to Earth, including
higher resolution close-up images of this previously unseen
terrain.
Visit
the MESSENGER
photo gallery for updates.
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Editor: Dr.
Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
| more
information |
| The
MESSENGER project
is the seventh in NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost,
scientifically focused space missions. The Applied Physics
Laboratory designed, built and operates the spacecraft
and manages the mission for NASA. MESSENGER stands for
MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and
Ranging. The Discovery and New Frontiers Program Office
at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center manages the
Discovery Program for NASA Headquarters.
New
Discoveries at Mercury (Science@NASA)
Dark
Halos Discovered on Mercury (Science@NASA)
Surprises
from Mercury (Science@NASA)
MESSENGER
is more than halfway through a 4.9-billion-mile journey
to enter orbit around Mercury that includes more than
15 trips around the sun. In addition to flying by Mercury,
the spacecraft flew past Earth in August 2005 and past
Venus in October 2006 and June 2007.
NASA's
Future: US
Space Exploration Policy |
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