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January 15, 2008

First Messenger image from Mercury flyby

NASA-Messenger-JHU/APL

Scientists and engineers at Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics lab have released the first closeup image of Mercury from Monday's flyby by the Messenger spacecraft. The photo includes some never-before-seen terrain that looks just like, well, the rest of Mercury, first (and last) photographed by the Mariner 10 spacecraft in 1974-1975. It also looks a lot like our moon.

That's okay. There's plenty more to come, and you can be sure there will be some surprises. Here's the release from APL. And here's an approach "movie" assembled from stills shot as Messenger neared Mercury on Sunday and Monday.

More to come. Here's Messenger's home page.

Posted by Frank Roylance at 10:06 PM | | Comments (2)
Categories: Cool pictures
        

Comments

Question: why isn't the Earth cratered the way the Moon and Mercury seem to be?

Earth has certainly been bombarded from space just like the moon and Mercury. Many craters, large and small, have been identified around the world, the best known being Meteor Crater in Arizona. But the heaviest bombardment occurred billions of years ago in the early history of the solar system. Most of those craters have long-since been smoothed over by weathering - wind and water - and by the movement of the planet's continental plates over millions of years. Mars, too, has been smoothed over by weathering, but its thin air and scarce water have left the surface looking more heavily cratered than Earth, but less so than airless Mercury.

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About Frank Roylance
Frank Roylance is a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. He came to Baltimore from New Bedford, Mass. in 1980 to join the old Evening Sun. He moved to the morning Sun when the papers merged in 1992, and has spent most of his time since covering science, including astronomy and the weather. One of The Baltimore Sun's first online Web logs, the Weather Blog debuted in October 2004. In June 2006 Frank also began writing comments on local weather and stargazing for The Baltimore Sun's print Weather Page. Frank also answers readers’ weather queries for the newspaper and the blog. Frank Roylance retired in October 2011. Maryland Weather is now being updated by members of The Baltimore Sun staff
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