MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon chaired the three-day meeting, which brought 130 scientists, engineers, educators, and managers to the Broad Branch Road campus.  As it was the first team meeting since the MESSENGER spacecraft was successfully inserted into orbit about Mercury in March, the focus of most presentations and discussions was on early observations of the innermost planet from orbit.

Meetings of the MESSENGER Science Team disciplinary groups were held on 10 and 11 May, and plenary sessions of the full team followed on the afternoon of 11 May and the morning of 12 May.  A team dinner on 11 May, held at a local restaurant, featured an after-dinner presentation by James Green, Director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters.

*re-posted from: http://dtm.ciw.edu

Click to view MESSENGER Mercury Orbit Insertion Press Kit.

To view recent images captured by MESSENGER click here.

*re-posted from: http://messenger.jhuapl.edu

*Of Interest: In 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft captured the first portrait of our Solar System as seen from the outside looking in. As a complement to this view, which contained the iconic “pale blue dot” image of Earth, the MESSENGER spacecraft collected this series of images to complete a “family portrait” of our Solar System as seen from the inside looking out.

Comprised of 34 WAC image positions with NAC insets, the majority of this mosaic was obtained on 3 November 2010. However, due to pointing constraints on the spacecraft, the portion of the mosaic near and covering Neptune was acquired a few weeks later on 16 November 2010. All of the planets are visible except for Uranus and Neptune, which at distances of 3.0 and 4.4 billion kilometers were too faint to detect with even the longest camera exposure time of 10 seconds, though their positions are indicated. (The dwarf-planet Pluto, smaller and farther away, would have been even more difficult to observe). Earth’s Moon and Jupiter’s Galilean satellites (Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, and Io) can be seen in the NAC image insets. Our Solar System’s perch on a spiral arm also afforded a beautiful view of a portion of the Milky Way galaxy in the bottom center. Click here to see a graphic showing the positions of the planets at the time this mosaic was acquired.

The curved shape of the mosaic is due to the inclination of MESSENGER’s orbit from the ecliptic, the plane in which Earth and the other planets orbit, which means that the cameras must point up to see some planets and down to see others. The images are stretched to make it easier to detect the planets, though this stretch also highlights light scattered off of the planet limbs, and in some cases creates artifacts such as the non-spherical shape of some planets. Around Venus and to some degree Earth, a diffraction pattern that results from light reflecting within the WAC is visible. Each image is a merged product of three calibrated 10-second exposures to reduce scene noise.

The mosaic shown here displays the NAC insets at the full resolution captured by the camera, with the WAC images at reduced resolution. Click here for a full-resolution version of the WAC mosaic (22 MB). Click here to see a NAC image of Jupiter with the Galilean satellites labeled.

Click here to read the full news story about what it took to make this Solar System family portrait possible.

*re-posted from: http://messenger.jhuapl.edu

*Of Interest: When MESSENGER first flew by Mercury on January 14, 2008, MDIS acquired images of a large portion of Mercury’s surface that had never previously been seen by spacecraft. This mosaic of NAC images shows some of the geologic features discovered during that first flyby that have been subsequently named: the curving cliff face of Beagle Rupes, the elongated crater Sveinsdottir, and the craters Izquierdo and Kunisada flooded with lava.

This year, the MESSENGER spacecraft is positioned once again to visit the Solar System’s innermost planet. However, this time, the spacecraft won’t just pass by. On March 18, 2011, a 15-minute maneuver will place MESSENGER in orbit about Mercury, making it the first spacecraft ever to do so. The MESSENGER mission will then begin an extensive year-long science campaign to unravel Mercury’s mysteries. 2011 promises to be an exciting year of further discoveries for the MESSENGER mission.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

*re-posted from: http://messenger.jhuapl.edu

*Of Interest: During MESSENGER’s second flyby of Mercury, MDIS acquired a strip of high-resolution images obtained with each of the WAC’s 11 different color filters. [Read more...]

MESSENGER Images from 2010

*As 2010 comes to a close, the MESSENGER spacecraft is less than three month

s from becoming the first ever to enter orbit about Mercury. The coming year 2011 promises to be a historic one for the MESSENGER mission and for the exploration of the Solar System more generally. As we await turning the page on the calendar, let’s look back at 12 image highlights from this year:

• January: Honoring Haitian Painter Benoit and American Photographer Lange
• February: Spectacular Color… with Better Yet to Come
• March: Rachmaninoff in Concert with Recently Named Craters on Mercury
• April: How Mercury’s Copland Received Its Name
• May: Painting a Wave of Rays
• June: The Complex Geology of Geddes Crater
• July: Debussy and Its Hundreds of Miles of Rays
• August: Earth and Moon from 114 Million Miles
• September: Young Volcanism on Mercury
• October: Looking Toward Mercury’s Horizon
• November: Mercury’s Vast Expanses of Smooth Plains
• December: The Impressive Rays of Hokusai

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

*re-posted from: http://messenger.jhuapl.edu