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Post Info TOPIC: MESSENGER
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The double-ringed crater pictured in the lower left of this image appears to be filled with smooth plains material, perhaps volcanic in nature. This crater was subsequently disrupted by the formation of a prominent scarp (cliff), the surface expression of a major crustal fault system, that runs alongside part of its northern rim and may have led to the uplift seen across a portion of the craters floor. A smaller crater in the lower right of the image has also been cut by the scarp, showing that the fault beneath the scarp was active after both of these craters had formed. The MESSENGER team is working to combine inferences about the timing of events gained from this image with similar information from the hundreds of other images acquired by MESSENGER to extend and refine the geological history of Mercury previously defined on the basis only of Mariner 10 images.

miss_ge1
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Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

This MESSENGER image was taken from a distance of about 18,000 kilometres from the surface of Mercury, at 20:03 UTC, about 58 minutes after the closest approach point of the flyby. The region shown is about 500 kilometres across, and craters as small as 1 kilometre can be seen in this image.


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Blobrana


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Like the previously mapped portions of Mercury, the new sections appear heavily cratered.

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"Mariner 10 saw these big, big cliff-shaped faults that have been interpreted as indicating the planet contracted ....We are seeing them, but there's a greater diversity of tectonic features than expected" - Sean Solomon, Messenger's principal investigator, Carnegie Institution in Washington.

The Messenger spacecraft also imaged craters with strange dark halos around them.

"...the craters had excavated through superficial material and brought up materials of some different composition" - Sean Solomon.

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Blobrana


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MESSENGER Spacecraft Trajectory



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Blobrana


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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 metres/pixel, and the width of the image is about 370 kilometres. 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.

messe3
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Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

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Blobrana


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Just 21 minutes after MESSENGERs closest approach to Mercury, the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) took this picture showing a variety of intriguing surface features, including craters as small as about 300 meters (about 300 yards) across. This is one of a set of 68 NAC images showing landscapes near Mercurys equator on the side of the planet never before imaged by spacecraft.

messge4
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Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

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Blobrana


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As MESSENGER approached Mercury on January 14, 2008, the spacecrafts Narrow-Angle Camera on the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) instrument captured this view of the planets rugged, cratered landscape illuminated obliquely by the Sun. The large, shadow-filled, double ringed crater to the upper right was glimpsed by Mariner 10 more than three decades ago and named Vivaldi, after the Italian composer. Its outer ring has a diameter of about 200 kilometres.

messge5
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Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

This MESSENGER image was taken from a distance of about18,000 kilometres, about 56 minutes before the spacecraft's closest encounter with Mercury. It shows a region roughly 500 kilometres across, and craters as small as 1 kilometre can be seen in this image.

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Blobrana


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Monday's manoeuvre took the probe to within just 200km (125 miles) of the planet at closest approach.
Messenger was programmed to collect more than 1,300 images and make other observations during the encounter.
The 700GB of data began transmission to Earth on Tuesday.

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When NASA's tiny Messenger spacecraft emerged from behind the planet Mercury yesterday afternoon, its radio beacon flashed across the solar system, and 107 million miles away, applause broke out in Maryland.
The Maryland-built probe had just skimmed within 124 miles of the planet's surface, programmed to snap hundreds of photographs of a never-before-seen side of the sun's nearest neighbour. It was humanity's first close-up look at Mercury in almost 33 years.

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At 2:04 p.m. EST MESSENGER skimmed 200 kilometres  above the surface of Mercury in the first of three flybys of the planet. Initial indications from the radio signals indicate the spacecraft is still operating nominally. The first science data return from the flyby was received today, just minutes before the closest approach point with the planet, as planned.

The engineers and operators at the Deep Space Network (DSN) in Goldstone, California, in conjunction with engineers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., pulled off a tremendous feat, acquiring and locking onto the downlink signal from the spacecraft within seconds, providing the necessary Doppler measurements for the Radio Science team. The spacecraft is continuing to collect imagery and other scientific measurements from the planet as we now depart Mercury from the illuminated side, documenting for the first time the previously unseen surface of the planet - MESSENGER Mission Systems Engineer Eric Finnegan, of APL.

Tomorrow at noon EST, the spacecraft will turn back towards the Earth to start down-linking the on-board stored data. Measurements of this Doppler signal from the spacecraft will allow improve knowledge of Mercurys gravity field.

Source NASA/JPL

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Earth from Space



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