NASA’s Mercury MESSENGER Mission PI Sean Solomon Will Speak At The Museum July 26
Friday, July 23 8:38 am
Since NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft was launched on a mission to study Mercury in 2004, it has returned stunning photographs of the innermost planet gathered during a series of flybys. (For a recent New York Times story about the surprising discoveries the spacecraft has already made, click here). Sean Solomon, principal investigator of MESSENGER, will be at the Museum on Monday, July 26, to speak about the new insights gleaned about Mercury’s high-density composition, its geological history, and its magnetic field in a special lecture. He will also discuss what’s next for MESSENGER, which is slated to enter Mercury’s orbit in March 2011. For some of the images retrieved from the mission so far, check out the gallery below.
 Lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida occurred in August, 2004, launching the MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft on a 4.9-billion-mile journey to Mercury. The spacecraft, which was built for NASA by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, flew by Earth, Venus, and Mercury several times and will have circled the Sun 15 times before going into orbit around Mercury in March 2011. Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA |
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 This image was taken as the spacecraft left the planet after its first Mercury flyby in early 2008. Its stunning colors would not be seen by the human eye but reflect information about the distribution of different rock types on the planet’s surface. The large yellow area in the north is the Caloris basin, which stretches about 1,550 kilometers (960 miles) in diameter. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Arizona State University/Carnegie Institution of Washington |
 This crater, which is 85 kilometers (53 miles) in diameter, is a prominent feature on Mercury’s surface due to its extensive system of rays, which reach for hundreds of miles. Even before the images supplied by MESSENGER, it had been identified in Earth-based radar images. It was named after the French composer Claude Debussy. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington |
 The crater at the center of this image, which measures 133 kilometers (83 miles), was imaged in 2009 on the spacecraft’s third flyby of the planet. Named after the Spanish master Pablo Picasso, its features a large, arc-shaped pit on the eastern side that may have formed when subsurface magma drained and offers interesting clues to Mercury’s geological history. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington |
 The image, taken during MESSENGER’s third flyby of Mercury, shows a vast lava plain, suggesting that Mercury was the site of intense volcanic activity at one point in its geologic history. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington |
