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Mercury Craters, Up Close
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
This historic first orbital image of Mercury was taken by NASA's Messenger spacecraft on March 29, 2011, 37 years to the day after Mariner 10's historic first flyby of the planet. Labels show several craters that were named on the basis of Mariner 10 images, as well as Debussy, Matabei, and Berkel, which were named on the basis of on earlier Messenger flyby images. The surface area within the white lines is terrain previously unseen by spacecraft, and the star indicates the location of the south pole.
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Mercury's Terra Incognita Revealed
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
This wide-angle camera photo from Nshowing a never-before-imaged area of Mercury’s surface was taken from an altitude of ~450 km (280 miles) above the planet during the spacecraft’s first orbit with the camera in operation. The area is covered in secondary craters made by an impact outside of the field of view. Some of the secondary craters are oriented in chain-like formations.
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MESSENGER in Orbit
Credit: NASA
An artist's conception shows the MESSENGER spacecraft in orbit around Mercury.
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Mercury in Color Vision
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
In this color image of Mercury taken by the wide-angle camera on NASA's Messenger spacecraft the rocky planet from orbit as it appeared on March 29, 2011. This view was taken using Messenger's 1000 nm, 750 nm, and 430 nm filters, which appear in red, green, and blue, respectively. Several craters appear to have excavated compositionally distinct low-reflectance (brown-blue in this color scheme) material, and the bright rays of Hokusai crater to the north cross the image.
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NASA Sends Mercury a MESSENGER
Credit: NASA/KSC
While NASA's Messenger spacecraft arrived in orbit around Mercury on March 17, 2011, the spacecraft spent more than six years traveling through space to reach the planet, and even fly by Mercury 3 times before entering orbit (once in 2008 and twice in 2009). Here, Messenger, the first probe sent to Mercury in 30 years and the first ever to orbit the planet, rockets into the early morning sky above Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 2:15:56 a.m EDT 615:56 GMT) Aug. 3, 2004 abo(0ard a Boeing Delta 2 launch vehicle.
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Peeling Mercury's Layers
Credit: Karl Tate, SPACE.com
Mercury is the closest planet to the sun and has a thin atmosphere, no air pressure and an extremely high temperature. Take a look inside the planet.
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Gearing Up for Mercury Flybys
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/Carnegie Institute of Washington.
On Jan. 9, 2008, the MESSENGER spacecraft snapped one of its first images of Mercury at a distance of about 2.7 million kilometers (1.7 million miles) from the planet.
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Buzzing Mercury
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CWI.
The image taken by the MESSENGER spacecraft on Sept. 27, 2009. shows the planet Mercury as it appeared to the probe 55 hours prior to the closest approach of its third flyby, which was set for Sept. 29 2009 at 5:55 pm EDT.
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MESSENGER Flyby
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
This view is one of the first from the MESSENGER probe's Oct. 6, 2008 flyby of Mercury.
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Mercury Spider
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
The MESSENGER spacecraft obtained high-resolution images of the floor of the Caloris basin on Jan. 14, 2008. Near the center of the basin, an area unseen by Mariner 10, this remarkable feature – nicknamed "the spider" by the science team – was revealed. A set of troughs radiates outward in a geometry unlike anything seen by Mariner 10.
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Mercury's Atmosphere
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
Color differences on Mercury are subtle, but they reveal important information about the nature of the planet's surface material. A number of bright spots with a bluish tinge are visible in this image taken by MESSENGER on Jan. 14, 2008, which is a mosaic from three different images.
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Mercury's Surface Ice
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
MESSENGER's Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer (MASCS) took measurements of the light bouncing off Mercury's surface in different colors to help scientists understand what the soil is made of, and whether ice can exist on the closest planet to the sun. The red and blue lines represent two different points on the planet's surface, and their divergence reveals that different minerals are present in each bit of land.
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Mercury's Particle Tails
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
Scientists don't know exactly what creates and shapes the bright tails of particles that stream off the planet's surface. This image from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft shows Mercury shows the ground track of observations made by the Visible and Infrared Spectrograph, one of the probe's tools for determining surface composition.
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Mercury's Pock-marked Surface
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
Several processes have acted to sculpt Mercury’s surface over time, and evidence of them is abundant in this image. This scene shows at least five different events in Mercury’s surface history. This image of Mercury’s surface was acquired during MESSENGER’s first flyby of the planet on Jan. 14, 2008, through the lens of the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC), part of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS).
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Mercury Magnetosphere Depiction
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
This depiction of a simulated Mercury magnetosphere shows representations of the distortions of the planetary magnetic field lines (blue) by the solar wind. Mariner 10 data showed the first evidence for a magnetic field at Mercury, an unexpected result. The equatorial pass of MESSENGER during quiet solar conditions provided better data than were available from Mariner 10.
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Mercury's Hidden Side
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
This image of Mercury’s surface was acquired during MESSENGER's first flyby of the planet on Jan. 14, 2008, through the lens of the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC), part of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS). The image was acquired when MDIS was 11,588 km (7,200 miles) from Mercury’s surface.
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Mercury's Volcanoes
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
The double-ringed crater on Mercury pictured in the lower left of this image appears to be filled with smooth plains material, perhaps volcanic in nature. The MESSENGER spacecraft took this image during its closest approach to Mercury on Jan. 14, 2008 using its Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) on the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) instrument.
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Mercury's Shrinking Core
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
As the MESSENGER team continues to study the high-resolution images taken during the Mercury flyby encounter on Jan. 14, 2008, scarps (cliffs) that extend for long distances are discovered. This frame, taken by the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), shows a region of Mercury's surface previously unseen by spacecraft and a large scarp crossing vertically through the scene, on the far right of the image.
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Surprise Slosh! Mercury's Core is Liquid
Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF
Artistic rendering of the observational geometry. A radar signal (yellow) is transmitted from the Goldstone antenna in California. Radar echoes (red) are received at the Goldstone antenna and at the Robert C. Byrd telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia.
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Mercury's Horizon and Craters
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
As the MESSENGER spacecraft drew closer to Mercury for its historic first flyby, the spacecraft acquired this mosaic of the sunlit portion of the planet. This image is one of those mosaic frames and was acquired on Jan. 14, 2008, 18:10 UTC, when the spacecraft was about 18,000 kilometers (11,000 miles) from the surface of Mercury.
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MESSENGER Coming Close
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
This visible-infrared image shows an incoming view of Mercury, about 80 minutes before MESSENGER's closest pass of the planet on Jan. 14, 2008, from a distance of about 27,000 kilometers (17,000 miles). The color image was generated by combining three separate images taken with different filters.
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Mercury's Mysterious Bright Spot
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
A mysterious bright area on the surface of Mercury is seen near the top center of this 2009 image. The MESSENGER probe also imaged this spot in its second flyby of the planet on Oct. 6, 2008. Color images from MESSENGER's Wide Angle Camera reveal that the irregular depression and bright halo have distinctive color.
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As the World Turns: MESSENGER's Home Movie of Earth
Credit: NASA/JHU/APL.
This image, taken while MESSENGER was 34,692 miles (55,831 kilometers) above Earth, shows the Galapagos Islands as tiny specks peeking through clouds. The line dividing day and night cuts through South America, with night about to fall on the western half of the continent. The large bright spot to the west of South America is the Sun’s light scattering off ocean waves.
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MESSENGER Flyby of Venus a Dress Rehearsal for Mercury
Credit: Sean Solomon, The Carnegie Institution of Washington
Venus 2 Flyby. As the MESSENGER spacecraft approaches the brightly illuminated Venus on June 5, 2007, it will begin a carefully planned sequence of science observations designed to practice activities planned seven months later at the first flyby of Mercury.
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MESSENGER's New View of Mercury
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
As NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft approached Mercury on January 14, 2008, it captured this view of the planet's rugged, cratered landscape illuminated obliquely by the sun.
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Huge Impact Crater on Planet Mercury
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Arizona State University/Carnegie Institute of Washington
A mosaic of images collected by MESSENGER as it departed Mercury on October 6, 2008. The Wide Angle Camera on MESSENGER imaged the surface through 11 color filters ranging in wavelength from 430 to 1020 nm. This false-color image reflects various wavelengths of light reflecting from the surface.
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MESSENGER's Solar System Family Portrait
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
The MESSENGER spacecraft, which is headed for orbit around Mercury, collected this series of images to complete a "family portrait" of our Solar System as seen from the inside looking out. The majority of this mosaic was obtained on 3 November 2010. Uranus and Neptune remained too faint to detect with even the longest camera exposure time, but their positions are indicated.
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Is Mercury the Incredible Shrinking Planet? MESSENGER Spacecraft May Find Out
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW.
Artist's impression of the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft in orbit at Mercury.
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One Crater, Many Rays
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
Bright rays spread across this Messenger spacecraft photo and radiate from Debussy crater, located at the top. The March 29, 2011 image shows just a small portion of Debussy's large system of rays in greater detail than ever previously seen. Debussy's rays extend for hundreds of kilometers across Mercury's surface.
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First Color Photo of Mercury from Orbit
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/CIW
On March 29, 2011, NASA's Messenger spacecraft became the first probe ever to orbit Mercury. This image is the first color photo Mercury, showing the planet's southern polar region, acquired by Messenger from its new orbit. The Messenger probe arrived in orbit around Mercury on March 17 after three previous flybys of the planet.
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Mercury's horizon, as seen from orbit by NASA's Messenger spacecraft
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
A view of the horizon of Mercury, taken by NASA's Messenger spacecraft on March 29, 2011. The picture shows a stretch of land about 750 miles long, from top to bottom.
