On Monday, Jan. 14, a pioneering NASA spacecraft will be the first to visit Mercury in almost 33 years when it soars over the planet to explore and snap close-up images of never-before-seen terrain. These findings could open new theories and answer old questions in the study of the solar system.
The MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging spacecraft, called MESSENGER, is the first mission sent to orbit the planet closest to our sun. Before that orbit begins in 2011, the probe will make three flights past the small planet, skimming as close as 124 miles above Mercury's cratered, rocky surface.

Read more (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/jan/HQ_08003_Mercury_flyby.html)

What exactly are they looking for on Mercury? Mariner 10 already showed this havoc...:bugeye:

Mercury has got anorthosite and basalt, sulfides in regolith, as well as plagioclase (tectosilicate range of minerals)

http://www.spacemedia.com/ap_sternbach_gallery_05.gif

Caloris basin impact site puzzles them? ...

They got updates of its current imagery:

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/encounters/index.php?autorefresh=false&time=1200339690

Surprisingly only half of the moon has been imaged by spacecraft.

Surprisingly only half of the moon has been imaged by spacecraft.

The moon :confused:

What are they looking for on Mercury ? Impact patterns ?

>>Re Moon

Hum,
a Freudian slip

Mercury is surprisenly dense for it's mass (It has the same gravity of mars but only half it's mass)
The tides effects might also be interesting and it's effect on it's surface core and it's magnetic field and it's tiny atmosphere... many things could be interesting to know.

It would be interesting to look closely at the thin area between daylight and darkness. Also the impact of the solar wind on the planet.

The Messenger space probe successfully made its near flyby of Mercury on Monday.
At nearest approach the probe flew only 200 kilometres above the surface collecting 1,200 images for the surface. This is the first time, since Mariner 10 visited the planet in 1975, that a spaceprobe has had such a close look at the planet.

IMAGE (http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/5867/messmer090108ge1hf8.jpg)
A crescent view of Mercury taken by MESSENGER when it was about 760,000 kilometres from the planet between January 9 and January 13, 2008.
Credit: NASA/APL

Another 3 years before the spacecraft finally settles into a stable orbit. I looked at a false colour image of Mercury and it looked horrible. I'd sooner see the natural dull colours.

The ESA-JAXA (Europe/Japan) mission is still 11 years from arrival at Mercury, not being launched till 2013.

Wow,
never before seen surface....

The image was taken by the Wide Angle Camera, through a filter sensitive to light near the red end of the visible spectrum (750 nm).

Thumbnail image (http://www.socialsplash-photos1.com/files/photos/dfeb9598fbfb97cL.jpg)
IMAGE (http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/5453/wac1zk4.jpg) (129kb, 1024 x 998)
Credit NASA

This image was taken about 80 minutes after MESSENGER's closest approach to Mercury (2:04 pm EST), when the spacecraft was 27,000 kilometres away.
The image shows features as small as 10 kilometres in size.

well horrray millions of dollars for this "moon-like-looking" shot of surface of Mercury

The surface does look like a less cratered version of the Moon (I suppose the Sun took care of meteors "wandering" in that area in the early days of the solar system.) The odd thing is that looking at magnified Moon rocks, they have the same appearance as that surface; a hard rock cratered by micro-meteors.

well horrray millions of dollars for this "moon-like-looking" shot of surface of Mercury

Not really.

This MESSENGER image was taken about 56 minutes before the spacecraft's closest encounter with Mercury, when it was at a distance of approximately 18,000 kilometres away.
It shows the large double ringed crater named Vivaldi towards the right, The craters outer ring has a diameter of about 200 kilometres.

THUMBNAIL (http://www.socialsplash-photos1.com/files/photos/2668a7105966caeL.jpg) (18kb)
IMAGE (http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/9501/messge5oh8.jpg) (204kb, 1024 x 768)
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington'

The image covers an area roughly 500 by 375 kilometres.
Craters as small as 1 kilometre can also be seen in this image.

This is good, how long before we get some real indetail information.

In my calculations i found that mercury had a very lot of carbon as a apart of its composition. as well gases, is it possible that the surface of mercury looks that way because it has exsperinced out gasing.


DwayneD.L.Rabon

In other images, towering cliffs can be seen; indicating that there was some crustal movements.

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

Source (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/sci/tech/7192479.stm)


"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.

This probe looks very cool!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7195374.stm

BEBICOLOMBO MISSION TO PLANET MERCURY
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44366000/gif/_44366683_bepicol_earth_inf416.gif

BepiColombo employs a Fregat booster (1) to give it the initial impetus to move away from Planet Earth
The mission then relies on a dual propulsion module (2) to control its passage into the inner Solar System
(3) The European Mercury Planetary Orbiter carries 11 instruments, one of which is supplied by Russian scientists
For the cruise phase, the spacecraft stack uses a sunshield (4) to protect Japan's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (5)
At Mercury, the Japanese orbiter dispenses with its sunshield and spins to prevent surfaces overheating
The MMO and MPO also separate from each other at Mercury and go into different polar orbits
Total length of mission stack components is five metres; launch mass is three tonnes (50% of that is fuel)

What are they looking for on Mercury ?

Mercurians are said to live beneth the surface with a very tecnologicaly advanced socirty. They live off selling "mercury" to other civilizations throughout the universe hence where they got their name from.

This image shows a view looking toward Mercury’s south pole. At the bottom left of the image the terminator can be seen. Little evidence for the technologically advanced society exists on the surface.

Expand (http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/7371/southpolemercge3gy7.jpg) (153kb, 1024 x 768)
Credit: MESSENGER Teams, JHU APL, NASA

The image was acquired about 98 minutes after the spacecrafts closest approach to Mercury, when it was at a distance of about 33,000 kilometres.

This visible-infrared image shows an incoming view of Mercury, about 80 minutes before the spacecrafts flyby of the planet on January 14, 2008, from a distance of about 27,000 kilometres.

IMAGE (http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/8471/mercolour1cy6.jpg) (110kb, 1024 x 768)
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

This colour image was generated by combining three separate images taken through WAC filters sensitive to light in different wavelengths.

Not a vacation spot. :)

Not a vacation spot. :)

Caloris basin is ok but no contest with the Ice cliffs of Miranda

In the mid-1970s, Mariner 10 caught a tantalizing glimpse of the basin's edge, a ring of shadowed mountains thrown up long ago by some catastrophic impact. A comet or asteroid had smashed Mercury and gouged a crater bigger than the state of Texas. What was inside? No one could say.

IMAGE (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/images/mercuryflyby/unseenside_strip_lab2.jpg) (27kb, 450 x 360)

Source (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/21jan_mercuryflyby.htm)

"NASA will host a media teleconference Thursday, July 3, at 2 p.m. EDT, to discuss analysis of data from the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft's flyby of Mercury earlier this year."

Read more (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/jul/HQ_M08128_MESSENGER_update.html)

MESSENGER Settles old Debates and Makes new Discoveries at Mercury
"Scientists have argued about the origins of Mercury’s smooth plains and the source of its magnetic field for over 30 years. Now, analyses of data from the January 2008 flyby of the planet by the MESSENGER spacecraft have shown that volcanoes were involved in plains formation and suggest that its magnetic field is actively produced in the planet’s core and is not a frozen relic."

Read more (http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=100)

“... expected amounts of ions like sodium, potassium, and calcium that had previously been detected in Mercury's exosphere, but to the science team's great surprise there was also water present, and in large amounts.”

Read more (http://planetary.org/news/2008/0703_MESSENGER_Scientists_Astonished_to.html)