NASA's MESSENGER is delivering more data on its second flyby of Mercury. Images sent back so far include pictures of impact craters complete with ray systems, similar to lunar impact craters. The rays are made of bright material ejected when the crater was gouged out of the surface. The presence of a ray system suggests the crater at its center is relatively young.
The probe is also building a mosaic of images, which will allow better maps of the surface.
MESSENGER has one more flyby of Mercury after this one before going into orbit around the planet in March, 2011.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment