First View of Mercury from Orbit
Early on the morning of March 29, 2011, at 5:20 am Eastern Daylight Time, the MESSENGER spacecraft captured this historic image of Mercury. This image is the first ever obtained from a spacecraft in orbit about the Solar System's innermost planet. Over the subsequent six hours, MESSENGER acquired an additional 363 images before downlinking some of the data to Earth. Exactly 37 years earlier (on March 29, 1974) Mariner 10 had made the first flyby of Mercury and returned the first closeup images of the planet.
The dominant rayed crater in the upper portion of the image is Debussy. The smaller crater Matabei with its unusual dark rays is visible to the west of Debussy. The bottom portion of this image is near Mercury's south pole and includes a region of Mercury's surface not previously seen by spacecraft.
The MESSENGER spacecraft is the first ever to orbit the planet Mercury, and the spacecraft's seven scientific instruments and radio science investigation have helped unravel the history and evolution of the solar system's innermost planet.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Image Number: PIA14076
Date: March 29, 2011
First View of Mercury from Orbit
Early on the morning of March 29, 2011, at 5:20 am Eastern Daylight Time, the MESSENGER spacecraft captured this historic image of Mercury. This image is the first ever obtained from a spacecraft in orbit about the Solar System's innermost planet. Over the subsequent six hours, MESSENGER acquired an additional 363 images before downlinking some of the data to Earth. Exactly 37 years earlier (on March 29, 1974) Mariner 10 had made the first flyby of Mercury and returned the first closeup images of the planet.
The dominant rayed crater in the upper portion of the image is Debussy. The smaller crater Matabei with its unusual dark rays is visible to the west of Debussy. The bottom portion of this image is near Mercury's south pole and includes a region of Mercury's surface not previously seen by spacecraft.
The MESSENGER spacecraft is the first ever to orbit the planet Mercury, and the spacecraft's seven scientific instruments and radio science investigation have helped unravel the history and evolution of the solar system's innermost planet.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Image Number: PIA14076
Date: March 29, 2011