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Tuesday, 07 October 2008 10:50 |
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This stunning image was taken by Mercury's WAC about 90 minutes after MESSENGER's closest approach to Mercury, when the spacecraft was at a distance of about 27,000 kilometers (about 17,000 miles) JHU/APL. | Yesterday at 4:40 a.m. EDT, MESSENGER successfully completed its second flyby of Mercury, and its cameras captured more than 1,200 high-resolution and color images of the planet, unveiling another 30 percent of Mercury's surface that had never before been seen by a spacecraft. MESSENGER's first flyby of Mercury in January yielded about 20 percent of the planet that was missed by Mariner 10 in 1974 and 1975, which imaged half of Mercury. "The MESSENGER team is extremely pleased by the superb performance of the spacecraft and the payload," commented Principal Investigator and DTM Director Sean Solomon. "We are now on the correct trajectory for eventual insertion into orbit around Mercury, and all of our instruments returned data as planned from the side of the planet opposite to the one viewed during our first flyby. When these data have been digested and compared, we will have a global perspective of Mercury for the first time." For more information, and to view several of the spectacular images captured by MESSENGER's Wide Angle Camera (WAC), see the press release.
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