New angles on Mercury
New images of the planet provide more glimpses of Mercury’s mysteries
In the early morning hours of October 7, a small galactic wanderer turned its antennae toward Earth and transmitted secrets about the solar system’s smallest planet — Mercury. The previous day, NASA’s MESSENGER probe had completed its second flyby of Mercury, and had viewed terrain never seen before.
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The new images also reveal surface features not seen before: rays that line the planet like longitudinal hash marks and extend from a young crater in the north to just south of a crater called Kuiper. The Kuiper crater was previously seen from Mariner 10, the 1970s spacecraft that was Mercury’s first visitor from Earth.
Skirting just 200 kilometers above the planet’s surface, this flyby is the second of three before MESSENGER becomes the first craft to enter the orbit of the planet closest to the sun.