NASA released on Wednesday more of the first images of Mercury taken by a spacecraft orbiting the planet, including the first color closeups depicting it in all its pock-marked glory.
The images were taken by NASA's Messenger spacecraft, the first mission to orbit the planet closest to the sun, according to Messenger's website. Mercury has been seen up close before in fly-bys, but this mission marks the first complete long view reconnaissance of the planet’s geochemistry, geophysics, geologic history, atmosphere, magnetosphere, and plasma environment.
The mission also allows NASA and its partner, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, an opportunity to show off Messenger's impressive Mercury Dual Imaging System, which has two cameras: the Narrow Angle Camera and the Wide Angle Camera, NASA said.
The first image acquired by Messenger, which was released Tuesday, was part of an eight-image sequence for which images were acquired through eight of the wide angle camera's 11 filters. A color version of that first imaged terrain, pocked with craters, was obtained through the filters and displayed in red, green, and blue, respectively, NASA said.
Over the next two days, Messenger will acquire more than 1,000 additional images in support of a phase to review spacecraft and instrument performance. The yearlong primary science phase of the mission will begin on April 4, during which it is expected to acquire more than 75,000 images.
The Messenger spacecraft launched on August 3, 2004, and after fly-bys of Earth, Venus and Mercury, started its historic orbit around Mercury on March 17.
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory built and operates the Messenger spacecraft and manages the Discovery-class mission for NASA. Messenger is an acronym for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging.
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To those who question the immediate practical value of such fundamental research...I ask: of what immediate practical use is a newborn baby...and does this lack of immediate practical usefulness make each infant valueless to society?
Can't argue with that logic....even though I have 4 beautiful kids. I get your point though, and it is well taken.
Once all the photos have been taken, a Google Mercury application would be awesome!
I guess we should rather be spending the NASA money on providing fertility treatments to illegal aliens so we can have millions of mouths to feed that so nothing to support themselves. When we reach 20 billion people on this planet.. we will be more like a colony of insects... feeding on each other to survive.
another rock pile...seriously for whatever reason we are alone ...don`t know why yet ...not religious but there is something very strange about our existance
This is not real. G-D only created one planet. Totally made up.
and everyone knows that one is flat!
How does this help to thousands if not millions of americans in need of food, education, clothing,housing? Why don't we behave like intelligent beings and spend money on the living and not something that has taken billions of dollars to discover and is just that.... A discovery. Please people wake up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ever heard of SCIENCE???
Stop being an unwashed mass and get educated. All those problems have little to nothing to do with NASA projects. Why should all the benefits that science give us on a daily basis be taken away to help people who (in most recent examples) bought houses they couldn't really afford, or overcome economic downturns created by corporate greed, or skyrocketed and unaffordable healthcare costs by malpractices suits who serve no one but the single individual affected and lawyers? Kill off lobbyists, cut the fat from the defense industry and foreign interests, then talk about how NASA spends its tiny budget.
Mercury is beautiful..................NOT!
There is no such thing as mercury! It's not in the Bible. So It doesn't existn
Just amazes me that PPhillip didn't know (or did he?) That @Zazz 7's "poem" was not an original but rather lyrics from a popular song. Oh well, but no great thing really.
Again, I call BS on NASA. They could have released the color images yesterday. Apparently, they needed an extra day to properly edit any "weirdness" out of the color versions before releasing them to the general public.
The only reason they posted this today was because so many people pointed to the fact that there's no such thing as black & white digital photography. This thing about separate RGB filters sounds absurd.
Hey, why not just point the Hubble space telescope at Mercury? I'm sure you'll get some very good images from that.. and in Living Color too! Or is that just too simple for them?
I'm sorry you don't believe in reality ML.
this is not the same pic that was on cnn homepage
Americans: The most wasteful and dummiest tax players in the universe!
I look forward to Russia providing us these pics in the future....and maybe some from THEIR space station, thanks to the IDIOTS in our government shutting NASA down
You folks who comment so many times are idiots and have no life. At most comment 1 or 2 times and get on with your life. You are truly sad geek nerd losers when you spend your day arguing with strangers.
No word/photos of Jimmy Hoffa, eh ???