MESSENGER Passes Mercury
Credit: MESSENGER Teams, JHU APL, NASA
Posted on 01/16/2008 2:20:20 PM PST by sig226
Explanation: Two days ago, the MESSENGER spacecraft became only the second spacecraft in human history to swoop past Mercury. The last spacecraft to visit the Sun's closest planet was Mariner 10 over 35 years ago. Mariner 10 was not able to photograph Mercury's entire surface, and the images it did send back raised many questions. Therefore, much about planet Mercury remains unknown. This week's flyby of MESSENGER was only the first of three flybys. Over the next few years MESSENGER will swing past twice more and finally enter Mercury's orbit in 2011. MESSENGER is currently moving too fast to enter orbit around Mercury now. The above image was taken two days ago during MESSENGER's flyby and shows part of Mercury's surface that has never been imaged in detail before. Many more MESSENGER will hopefully help scientists better understand how Mercury's surface was formed, and why it is so dense.
Looks like our moon to me.
Must be a Cheddar. Velvita would have melted and left a smooooth surface.
Might look similar, but the composition is very different.
No “seas”, for instance. Just craters.
That’s a good observation. Something like 60% of the planet is iron core, whereas the moon has zero % core. That is bound to look different on the surface.
why it is so dense.
Government schools.
What you're perceiving is a psychological phenomenon whose name escapes me. Your brain sees round + gray + craters and the most familiar image with those features is the moon, so your brain says it looks like the moon. It actually doesn't.
Why? Because any iron on the moon is on the surface (presumably from meteorites) instead of in the core?
Before the modern computer mouse with the laser on the bottom, some of the more elderly may remember an older design that had a heavy metal ball covered with rubber for traction. That is like Mercury. A heavy iron ball with a thin layer of stuff outside. The surface may be chipped some from asteroid impacts but nothing major will happen to the planet. No seas, no volcanoes, nobody home.
Add a chain to it and it reminds me of my ex-gf.
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