Posted on 05/01/2015 4:58:04 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: The first to orbit Mercury, the MESSENGER spacecraft came to rest on this region of Mercury's surface yesterday. Constructed from MESSENGER image and laser altimeter data, the scene looks north over the northeastern rim of the broad, lava filled Shakespeare basin. The large, 48 kilometer (30 mile) wide crater Janacek is near the upper left edge. Terrain height is color coded with red regions about 3 kilometers above blue ones. MESSENGER'S final orbit was predicted to end near the center, with the spacecraft impacting the surface at nearly 4 kilometers per second (over 87,000 miles per hour) and creating a new crater about 16 meters (52 feet) in diameter. The impact on the far side of Mercury was not observed by telescopes, but confirmed when no signal was detected from the spacecraft given time to emerge from behind the planet. Launched in 2004, the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemisty and Ranging spacecraft completed over 4,000 orbits after reaching the Solar System's innermost planet in 2011.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ. APL, Arizona State Univ., CIW]
They spent all that money on the spacecraft.. and all they had to do was paint a cracker blue, and photograph it. :)
I watched all that on SLOOH dot com live yesterday afternoon.
One of the astronomers had made a quick montage of all the 1001 individual photographs of Mercury, and it was quite interesting.
A big Friday morning chuckle was enjoyed! Thank you :)
Nah, it would be hairier.
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