MESSENGER's first flyby of Mercury - Page 2

Jakenorrish · #31 (**permalink**) 14-January-2008, 11:46 PM

Not only is the mission another exciting prospect, but isn't being able to track it via the internet wonderful? Back in the day, having to rely on press releases etc now, the pictures are there almost at once. Breathtaking. Congratulations to all involved. It seems to be operating perfectly.

KaiYeves · #32 (**permalink**) 15-January-2008, 01:44 AM

My gosh, that animation is stunning!

Quote:

Not only is the mission another exciting prospect, but isn't being able to track it via the internet wonderful? Back in the day, having to rely on press releases etc now, the pictures are there almost at once. Breathtaking. Congratulations to all involved. It seems to be operating perfectly.

I agree. It must have been very hard to be a space geek in the Apollo days. 'Probably would have driven me up a wall.

mantiss · #33 (**permalink**) 15-January-2008, 05:55 PM

With the Departing movie wrapped up, does anyone know when we can expect a few teaser pics and other data to be made public?

01101001 · #34 (**permalink**) 15-January-2008, 06:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mantiss

With the Departing movie wrapped up, does anyone know when we can expect a few teaser pics and other data to be made public?

MESSENGER should have turned back to Earth about 1 hour ago and begun to send data. They are probably swamped, but I'd expect images on the web within 24 hours, and hopefully sooner. I'll be checking a lot today.

Images (As of now, navigation approach shots)
Movies (As of now, navigation approach movie)

ToSeek · #35 (**permalink**) 15-January-2008, 07:20 PM

I attended a lecture about MESSENGER at APL last night. It was a bit odd: because no science data had been returned yet, it was mostly about what they'd learned from Mariner 10 and what they expected to learn from this mission. They did say everything was fine with the spacecraft and that this flyby alone should cut the "terra incognita" of Mercury (now about 45%) in half.

mantiss · #36 (**permalink**) 15-January-2008, 07:37 PM

I feel like an expectant father, well, almost :P

01101001 · #37 (**permalink**) 15-January-2008, 10:45 PM

There's a short delay in science results. Details in a moment...

Details:

Planetary Society Weblog: MESSENGER update: maybe one image tonight

Quote:

As of yesterday, they had been expecting lots of images today, but data is not going to start coming back until tonight, and there will probably be only one image in this first communications pass.
[DSN Deep Space Network details...]
As you might imagine, scheduling of the single 70-meter dish is very, very tight. MESSENGER was expecting to get a 70-meter "pass" this morning, but because of an anomaly on Ulysses that required a 70-meter antenna, MESSENGER lost their 70-meter time.
[...]
Louise wasn't sure yet what the subsequent DSN schedule will be, or when to expect the rest of the images to start coming down. I imagine it's all a bit TBD as they try to get Ulysses to start talking again, and as other missions who also lost 70-meter time jockey for priority. But they should slowly trickle in over the course of the next week or two. Hopefully the trickle will be fast enough that they can release an image a day.

Did get a little time on a smaller dish and all looked good. Results were onboard awaiting downlinking.

They will get to do one image which may be posted tonight or tomorrow.

Edit: Later, Emily said in the blog: "don't expect an image until tomorrow morning."

01101001 · #38 (**permalink**) 16-January-2008, 01:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 01101001

There's a short delay in science results. Details in a moment...

Nope. Not editing that again. Off. On. Off. On...

Planetary Society Weblog: MESSENGER image released after all!

MESSENGER Images

MESSENGER’s First Look at Mercury’s Previously Unseen Side

Quote:

When Mariner 10 flew past Mercury three times in 1974 and 1975, the same hemisphere was in sunlight during each encounter. As a consequence, Mariner 10 was able to image less than half the planet. Planetary scientists have wondered for more than 30 years about what spacecraft images might reveal about the hemisphere of Mercury that Mariner 10 never viewed.

On January 14, 2008, the MESSENGER spacecraft observed about half of the hemisphere missed by Mariner 10. This image was snapped by the Wide Angle Camera, part of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) instrument, about 80 minutes after MESSENGER's closest approach to Mercury (2:04 pm EST), when the spacecraft was at a distance of about 27,000 kilometers (about 17,000 miles). The image shows features as small as 10 kilometers (6 miles) in size. This image was taken through a filter sensitive to light near the red end of the visible spectrum (750 nm), one of a sequence of images taken through each of MDIS’s 11 filters.

Like the previously mapped portion of Mercury, this hemisphere appears heavily cratered. It also reveals some unique and distinctive features. On the upper right is the giant Caloris basin, including its western portions never before seen by spacecraft. Formed by the impact of a large asteroid or comet, Caloris is one of the largest, and perhaps one of the youngest, basins in the Solar System. The new image shows the complete basin interior and reveals that it is brighter than the surrounding regions and may therefore have a different composition. Darker smooth plains completely surround Caloris, and many unusual dark-rimmed craters are observed inside the basin. Several other multi-ringed basins are seen in this image for the first time. Prominent fault scarps (large ridges) lace the newly viewed region.

parallaxicality · #39 (**permalink**) 16-January-2008, 03:50 AM

So no giant volcanoes, huh? Bummer.

Thanks a lot Astronomy Now, for getting my hopes up.

01101001 · #40 (**permalink**) 16-January-2008, 05:52 AM

From Planetary Society Weblog, Emily Lakdawalla suggests a similar JPL Solar System Simulator view of Mercury, but with blank areas indicating lack of coverage by Mariner 10:
Simulated view of Mercury by MESSENGER.

Compare with:
Actual view of Mercury by MESSENGER.

Your eyeballs just encountered much of that formerly undiscovered terrain.

================================================== =========================

Now up: Planetary Society Weblog: Things I think are cool in the first MESSENGER image of Mercury

Quote:

I'm getting sleepy so I'd better call it a night. The last time I talked to someone on MESSENGER it sounded like they probably got more than just this image in this evening's communications session, so I'm certain we'll see more images released tomorrow.

Launch window · #41 (**permalink**) 16-January-2008, 02:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 01101001

Images (As of now, navigation approach shots)
Movies (As of now, navigation approach movie)

great views

next fly-by October 2008 with orbital insertion in 2011.

Rude Dude · #42 (**permalink**) 16-January-2008, 05:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lord Jubjub

Getting out of Earth's gravity well is a large energy expenditure regardless of destination. It takes very little additional fuel to get TO Mercury. It takes a LOT of energy to slow down enough to be captured by Mercury's gravity.

Again, the problem isn't getting TO the planet, it's slowing down enough to take more than a few fleeting snapshots. Those weren't gravity assists, they were gravity brakes; the opposite of outward bound probes get.

This isn't about simply flying by Mercury. Mercury is very small and close to the sun. Any probe simply pushed toward the Sun will accelerate so much that Mercury will never be able to capture it. We could go straight to Mercury and fire retro-rockets to slow the probe down, but the probe would have to be the size of the original launching rocket. Which means that the original launching rocket would have to have been something the size of the Saturn rockets that launched Apollo.

Right after I launched these questions, I pulled up a fact sheet on Mercury that had a picture of Mercury crossing in front to the Sun and realized how tiny the planet was, which answered all the questions I asked. Thanks for the details. The one thing I hadn't thought of was the ammount of fuel it would take to SLOW the probe down against the gravity of the Sun. I was only considering the distance and size of Mercury.

Squink · #43 (**permalink**) 16-January-2008, 06:30 PM

There's some nice crater chains in this image.

KaiYeves · #44 (**permalink**) 16-January-2008, 08:37 PM

That picture is wonderful! I will certainly report it in my Exploration Journal! Who knew that such a Big Event would happen only a few months after I decided to keep one?

Saluki · #45 (**permalink**) 16-January-2008, 09:06 PM

I wish ESA were as up-front with its pics and data.

Swift · #46 (**permalink**) 16-January-2008, 09:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Squink

There's some nice crater chains in this image.

Wow, that's a cratered surface. Some nice examples too of craters within craters.

Van Rijn · #47 (**permalink**) 16-January-2008, 09:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rude Dude

Right after I launched these questions, I pulled up a fact sheet on Mercury that had a picture of Mercury crossing in front to the Sun and realized how tiny the planet was, which answered all the questions I asked. Thanks for the details. The one thing I hadn't thought of was the ammount of fuel it would take to SLOW the probe down against the gravity of the Sun. I was only considering the distance and size of Mercury.

Please don't be shy about asking questions like that. Celestial mechanics isn't the most intuitive of subjects.

01101001 · #48 (**permalink**) 17-January-2008, 05:49 AM

Wham.

Mercury's Cratered Surface

What's that? 4 images?

Only about 1200 to go.

Edit: A couple more

MESSENGER Reveals Mercury’s Geological History

MESSENGER Views Mercury’s Horizon

schlaugh · #49 (**permalink**) 17-January-2008, 08:29 PM

Even in the few images that NASA has released I'm struck (sorry, bad pun) by what seems to be a number of crater chains, and fairly large ones at that. My inference is that these chains were created by multiple objects impacting relatively close together in time.

Are these chains assumed to be ejecta impacts from larger impacts or from other bodies that have separated and impacted, such as we saw with Shoemaker-Levy 9?

ToSeek · #50 (**permalink**) 17-January-2008, 08:30 PM

I think the first flyby of Mercury in over 30 years deserves its own thread, don't you? (Preceding posts extracted from the Progress of Messenger in the Solar system thread.)

Squink · #51 (**permalink**) 17-January-2008, 09:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by schlaugh

My inference is that these chains were created by multiple objects impacting relatively close together in time.

The first photo with such chains had me thinking collapsed lava tubes, but they can't very well be everywhere, can they?

01101001 · #52 (**permalink**) 17-January-2008, 10:07 PM

Planetary Society Weblog, regarding one image:

Quote:

Another thing that leaps out at me is chains or lines of small craters. You can draw lines through them and they mostly converge at the position of Vivaldi, so that suggests to me that these are secondaries, craters that formed when something big smashed into Mercury to make Vivaldi, which threw mountains of Mercurian crust into the air, which smashed back down to the ground to make a splash of small, secondary craters surrounding the big one.

There's plenty on the Web regarding Mercury crater chains. They have had Mariner images to analyze for quite some time. (And opinions vary. For instance some claim there were no or few crater chains on Mercury; some claimed the crater chains there were probably due to effects of the nearby Sun on comets.)

Time will tell. There are thousands of images coming.

Tedward · #53 (**permalink**) 18-January-2008, 10:48 AM

Glad I signed up for the news letter. An amateur observer and learning the ropes but did spot the lines. Now I need to pay more attention.

01101001 · #54 (**permalink**) 18-January-2008, 06:28 PM

A couple more images trickled in. No flood yet.

I wouldn't remark on these, except one has text addressing the recently mentioned chains.

An Overview of Mercury as MESSENGER Approached

Mercury's Complex Cratering History

Quote:

The image shows part of a large, fresh crater with secondary crater chains located near Mercury’s equator on the side of the planet newly imaged by MESSENGER. Large, flat-floored craters often have terraced rims from post-impact collapse of their newly formed walls. The hundreds of secondary impactors that are excavated from the planet’s surface by the incoming object create long, linear crater chains radial to the main crater. These chains, in addition to the rest of the ejecta blanket, create the complicated, hilly terrain surrounding the primary crater.

MESSENGER Gallery Main Page

01101001 · #55 (**permalink**) 19-January-2008, 02:01 AM

MESSENGER’s Mercury Flyby Science Data Now Safely on Earth

Quote:

A day after its successful flyby of Mercury, the MESSENGER spacecraft turned toward Earth on Tuesday and began downloading the 500 megabytes of data that had been stored on the solid-state recorder during the encounter. All of those data, including 1,213 images from the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) cameras, have now been received by the Science Operations Center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. Preliminary analysis of these data by the MESSENGER Science Team has confirmed that all seven MESSENGER instruments are healthy and operated as planned during the flyby.

As MESSENGER flew by the planet, it missed its targeted aim point by only 8.25 kilometers (5.12 miles), affording the critical gravity assist needed to continue on a course to become – in 2011 – the first spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury. During this first encounter, the payload successfully conducted a carefully orchestrated sequence of observations designed to take full advantage of the geometry of the flyby trajectory and to optimize the science return from each instrument.

BetaDust · #56 (**permalink**) 19-January-2008, 11:43 AM

I searched the image Gallary on the JHAPL webside, but I could not find,
The "Image on the Day" Image taken by MESSENER used on the NASA webside. Is there a website were i can find all the images released?

Thanx for any help

Dennis

01101001 · #57 (**permalink**) 19-January-2008, 02:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BetaDust

I could not find,
The "Image on the Day" Image taken by MESSENER used on the NASA webside. Is there a website were i can find all the images released?

(For the curious, this NASA Image of the Day, doesn't seem to appear at MESSENGER Science Images.)

They have over 1200 flyby images downloaded from MESSENGER. The JHUAPL website currently shows about a dozen science images. There are therefore quite a few they haven't released to the public yet. I've seen no indication that they intended to throw up all raw images like the MER or the Cassini missions. Maybe they'll get to that point, but right now I think they are enjoying releasing them dramatically, with deserved fanfare and attention, making them digestible, organizing, captioning, generating composites -- making them science images and not just raw ones.

Similar was asked in topic MESSENGER's Venus images.

You may have to wait a year for the PDS release to see everything they have.

Squink · #58 (**permalink**) 19-January-2008, 05:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 01101001

Similar was asked in topic MESSENGER's Venus images.

A little off topic, but the detail revealed in the Mercury images makes the sheer smoothness of the Venus images even more impressive.

ToSeek · #59 (**permalink**) 21-January-2008, 06:19 PM

Has Messenger revealed lava flows on Mercury?

Quote:

Images from NASA's Messenger spacecraft hint at the presence of solidified lava flows on the surface of Mercury. If confirmed, they should provide crucial clues to unlocking the planet's history.

The first image released after the spacecraft's flyby on 14 January 2008, taken from a distance of 27,000 kilometres, shows dark areas near the top of the globe.

"Those dark splotchy regions look like lava flows to me," says David Rothery, a planetary scientist at the Open University in the UK.

The suspected flows appear to lie on top of the original crust, he says, implying that they formed after the end of the cratering that scarred Mercury's surface during the planet's first half-billion years of existence.

If so, then when Messenger gets a closer look at the planet's surface, scientists will be able to compare the composition of the lava flows with the surrounding, older crust. That should provide a window onto the processes that took place in the interior of the planet after the crust formed.

01101001 · #60 (**permalink**) 22-January-2008, 06:57 PM

Mercury - in color!

Quote:

The color image was generated by combining three separate images taken through WAC filters sensitive to light in different wavelengths; filters that transmit light with wavelengths of 1000, 700, and 430 nanometers (infrared, far red, and violet, respectively) were placed in the red, green, and blue channels, respectively, to create this image. The human eye is sensitive across only the wavelength range 400 to 700 nanometers. Creating a false-color image in this way accentuates color differences on Mercury's surface that cannot be seen in the single-filter, black-and-white image released last week.

MESSENGER Gallery Main Page

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