A NASA probe has begun
beaming back stunning new images from its successful second flyby of Mercury,
the planet closest to the sun.
NASA's MESSENGER probe
captured never-before-seen views of the Mercury during its encounter
on Monday. The spacecraft zipped past Mercury for the second time this year
and used the planet's gravity to adjust its path as it continues en route to
become the first probe to orbit the planet in March 2011.
One new image shows large
patterns of ray-like
lines extending southward across much of the planet surface from a young,
newly-imaged crater. The previously-imaged Kuiper crater and others craters also
have similar webs of lines radiating outward.
Another raw picture
represents the highest-resolution
color image ever taken of Mercury's surface, and came just 9 minutes after
the spacecraft's closest approach to Mercury at 4:43 a.m. EDT (0845 GMT).
Details include a large impact basin with an 83-mile (133-km) diameter, named
Polygnotus for a Greek painter from the 5th century B.C.
Yet a third first-time image
came from MESSENGER's approach to the crescent-shaped Mercury, and is one
of 44 pictures taken as part of a mosaic. Scientists hoped to collect nine
image mosaics total in order to add up to 30 percent of never-before-seen
regions of the planet's surface.
The second Mercury flyby of
Oct. 6 comes after a first
flyby on Jan. 14, which looked at a different side of the planet.
"When these data have
been digested and compared, we will have a global perspective of Mercury for
the first time," said Sean Solomon, MESSENGER's principal investigator at
the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Launched in August 2004,
MESSENGER — short for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and
Ranging — is the first spacecraft in 33 years to greet Mercury up close since
NASA's earlier Mariner 10 mission of the 1970s. The new probe is slated for a
third Mercury flyby in 2009 before finally settling into orbit on March 18,
2011. MESSENGER's $446 million mission is expected to spend about a year
studying Mercury.
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