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On August 3, 2004 the MESSENGER spacecraft blasted off into space from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, entering orbit around the innermost planet some six and a half years later, on March 18, 2011.
Over the course of the mission, the MESSENGER team has been posting Featured Images at regular intervals. The first image was posted in August 2005 -- and today we've hit 1,000 Featured Images!
This mosaic celebrates the incredible range of images, maps, and other scientific data shared by the MESSENGER team in more than eight years of web postings, but of course contains just a small percentage of the total collection of images now available online. Although we can't list them all, see if you can spot some highlights like the MESSENGER stamp, Mercury's dark and mysterious north pole, the Caloris basin in full color, lava channels, Pantheon Fossae, images of Earth and Venus, and the Cookie Monster!
Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
This video showcases a small sampling of the thousands of images taken by the spacecraft, as well as animations illustrating how MESSENGER moves in orbit and how its orbit has changed during the mission.
The opening sequence is from the approach images from the first flyby in 2008. The first animation to follow (at 0:15) shows MESSENGER in its primary mission 12-hour orbit. The relevance of the November 9, 2011, date is that this was when the MESSENGER team was advised that NASA had approved the proposal for an extended mission, allowing the mission to continue making new observations from March 2012 to March 2013. The animation at 0:22 gives you an idea of the movement and gyrations ("dancing") that the spacecraft undergoes while it performs a schedule packed full of observations that take place over one Earth day. The animation sequence at 0:59 gives you a "top down" view over Mercury's north pole from when MESSENGER first went into orbit until several months into the extended mission. The apparent size of the orbit shrinks from the start of the animation to the end, as shortly into the extended mission, MESSENGER's orbital period was shrunk from 12-hours to 8-hours. The animation sequence at 1:44 shows MESSENGER's "dance" on the first day of the extended mission. The other images and embedded movies can be found in the Gallery section of the MESSENGER website.
Some highlight images of note include:
At 0:48 - Blue rays of Bek crater
At 0:54 - Basho crater
At 0:57 - Poe crater in Caloris basin
At 1:17 - MASCS instrument surface scans in ultraviolet and infrared
At 1:19 - A perspective view of the northern polar region, color-coded to MLA topography
At 1:27 - Rembrandt impact basin
At 1:29 - Rembrandt impact basin superimposed on the US for size comparison
At 1:34 - Rachmaninoff impact basin, 3D effect crated using the digital elevation model
At 1:34 - Debussy crater
At 1:58 - Beagle rupes
At 2:04 - Mosaic view of north pole, showing the shadowed regions
At 2:06 - As previous, with superimposed radar data indicating likely water-ice deposits
At 2:11 - A volcanic vent near the edge of Caloris basin
At 2:34 - Derain crater
At 2:36 - Disney crater and two unnamed craters that resemble Mickey Mouse
At 2:38 - Basho crater while the Sun is low in the sky
At 2:40 - Basho crater again, but now with the Sun nearly overhead
At 2:45 - Degas crater
At 2:58 - 'Weird terrain' at the Caloris antipode
At 3:03 - Waters crater with the 'blue tongue' of dark impact melt material
At 3:10 - Seuss crater
At 3:13 - Caloris basin
At 3:15 - Pit in Scarlatti crater, with prominent hollows on the pit rim
At 3:17 - Enhanced color of Caloris basin
At 3:22 - A lava channel that had flowed into the Kofi crater
At 3:29 - More detail of Caloris basin floor
At 3:30 - The young, bright-rayed Mena crater
At 3:37 - Central peaks of Eminescu crater, with hollows around the bases of the peaks
At 3:39 - Apollodorus and Pantheon fossae
At 3:41 - The hollows on the floor of Sander crater
The MESSENGER spacecraft is the first ever to orbit the planet Mercury, and the spacecraft's seven scientific instruments and radio science investigation are unraveling the history and evolution of the Solar System's innermost planet. Visit the Why Mercury? section of this website to learn more about the key science questions that the MESSENGER mission is addressing. During the one-year primary mission, MDIS acquired 88,746 images and extensive other data sets. MESSENGER is now in a year-long extended mission, during which plans call for the acquisition of more than 80,000 additional images to support MESSENGER's science goals.
Video credit: Images and animation stills courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington. Music: "Mercury Ridge" by Simon Wilkinson (thebluemask.com). Video creation and time-lapse animations by Mark 'Indy' Kochte.
This image is a portion of the MDIS global mosaic basemap that was acquired during MESSENGER's first year in orbit. Of particular note is the flat-floored, southeast-trending valley in the center of the image, which starts near several depressions to the top left of the image, and connects with the Kofi crater (center right).
This valley is interpreted by MESSENGER team scientists as a broad lava channel, formed by the mechanical and thermal erosion of Mercury's surface by hot, low-viscosity, quickly-flowing lavas. The pits to the top left may be source vents for the lava flows that formed the channel; these flows then filled the Kofi crater at the channel's other end. Another lava channel, with a similar southeast trend, lies at the top right of the image, and there is a total of five broad channels in this region.
Determining how these channels formed, how rapidly they shaped the landscape, and how they relate to other volcanic features on Mercury -- such as expansive smooth plains nearby -- is important in understanding the role of volcanism on Mercury. Moreover, similar broad channels do not appear to exist elsewhere on Mercury, making this region a particularly interesting locale.
Date Created: February 10, 2012
Instrument: Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Latitude Range: 54.3° N to 61.3° N
Longitude Range: 109.4° E to 121.6° E
Resolution: 146 meters/pixel
Scale: Kofi, the large impact crater at center right, is approximately 135 km (84 mi.) in diameter
Projection: Azimuthal equidistant
Photo credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
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