MESSENGER Sends Earth the First Color Pictures of Mercury

In the first mission to the densest planet in the solar system since the Mariner 10 spacecraft visited it in 1974 and 1975, NASA’s MESSENGER probe made a historic flyby on January 14, 2008, skimming just 200 Km above Mercury’s surface.

The MESSENGER spacecraft was launched on August 3, 2004 and the current approach is part of a set of gravity-assisted maneuvers that will put it in Mercury’s orbit by March 2011. MESSENGER carries a wide- and narrow-angle color and monochrome imager, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, an X-ray spectrometer, an energetic particle and plasma spectrometer, an atmospheric and surface composition spectrometer, a laser altimeter, a magnetometer, and a radio science experiment. The mission aims at collecting data on the composition and structure of Mercury’s crust, investigate its topography, geologic history and the natures of its thin atmosphere and active magnetosphere, as well as the composition of its core and polar materials.

The just-received color pictures were made possible by combining images taken with different filters covering the visible and the infrared spectra. The result was an assortment of high-resolution views in false-color that accentuates differences in surface composition that would be undetectable to the human eye.

A full report on the mission can be found at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The site includes a handy animation tool with a simulated view of the instrument measurements, images, animations, and more.

All the images provided are a courtesy of NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington.

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