As MESSENGER approached Mercury on Jan. 14, the spacecraft’s Narrow-Angle Camera on the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) instrument captured a view of the planet’s rugged, cratered landscape illuminated obliquely by the Sun. See the image at
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=118
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 kilometers (about 125 miles).
MESSENGER’s modern camera has revealed detail that was not well seen by Mariner 10, including the broad ancient depression overlapped by the lower-left part of the Vivaldi crater.
The MESSENGER science team is in the process of evaluating later images snapped from even closer range showing features on the side of Mercury never seen by Mariner 10. It is already clear that MESSENGER’s superior camera will tell us much that could not be resolved even on the side of Mercury viewed by Mariner’s vidicon camera in the mid-1970s.
This MESSENGER image was taken from a distance of about18,000 kilometers (11,000 miles), about 56 minutes before the spacecraft's closest encounter with Mercury. It shows a region roughly 500 kilometers (300 miles) across, and craters as small as 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) can be seen in this image.
Additional information and features from this first flyby will be available online at http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/mer_flyby1.html
Check for the latest released images and science results.
MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) is a NASA-sponsored scientific investigation of the planet Mercury and the first space mission designed to orbit the planet closest to the Sun. The MESSENGER spacecraft launched on August 3, 2004, and after flybys of Earth, Venus, and Mercury will start a yearlong study of its target planet in March 2011. Dr. Sean C. Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, leads the mission as Principal Investigator. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory built and operates the MESSENGER spacecraft and manages this Discovery-class mission for NASA.