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    Science News NASA's MESSENGER Spacecraft Reveals Mercury As Never Seen Before ScienceDaily (Oct. 7, 2008)  NASA's MESSENGER space probe has made its second swing past Mercury, just 125 miles (200 kilometers) above the cratered surface of our solar system's closest planet to the Sun, snapping hundreds of pictures and collecting a variety of other data. See also: When Mariner 10 flew past Mercury three times in 1974 and 1975, the probe imaged less than half the planet. In January, during MESSENGER’s first flyby, its cameras returned images of about 20 percent of the planet’s surface missed by Mariner 10. On October 6, at 4:40 am EDT, MESSENGER successfully completed its second flyby of Mercury, and its cameras captured more than 1,200 high-resolution and color images of the planet – unveiling another 30 percent of Mercury’s surface that had never before been seen by spacecraft. “The MESSENGER team is extremely pleased by the superb performance of the spacecraft and the payload,” said MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. “We are now on the correct trajectory for eventual insertion into orbit around Mercury, and all of our instruments returned data as planned from the side of the planet opposite to the one we viewed during our first flyby. When these data have been digested and compared, we will have a global perspective of Mercury for the first time.” Today (October 7), at about 1:50 a.m. EDT, MESSENGER turned to Earth and began transmitting data gathered during its second Mercury encounter. Scientists got their first view of spectacular images snapped by the Wide Angle Camera (WAC), part of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) instrument, including one taken about 90 minutes after MESSENGER's closest approach to Mercury, when the spacecraft was at a distance of about 27,000 kilometers (about 17,000 miles). The bright crater just south of the center of the image is Kuiper, identified on images from the Mariner 10 mission in the 1970s. For most of the terrain east of Kuiper, toward the edge of the planet, the departing images are the first spacecraft views of that portion of Mercury’s surface. A striking characteristic of this newly imaged area is the large pattern of rays that extend from the northern region of Mercury to regions south of Kuiper. Another sequence of images reveals a portion of Mercury’s surface was previously imaged under different lighting conditions by Mariner 10, but the new MESSENGER image mosaic is the highest-resolution color imaging ever acquired of any portion of Mercury’s surface. As the MESSENGER team is busy examining this newly obtained view, data from the flyby continue to stream down to Earth, including higher resolution close-up images of this previously unseen terrain. Collectively, these images and measurements made by other MESSENGER instruments will soon provide a broad range of information for understanding the formation and geologic history of the innermost planet. Adapted from materials provided by . APA MLA The spectacular image shown here is one of the first to be returned and shows a WAC image of the departing planet taken about 90 minutes after the spacecraft's closest approach to Mercury. (Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington) Related Stories (Jan. 17, 2008)  As MESSENGER approached Mercury the spacecraft's Narrow-Angle Camera on the Mercury Dual Imaging System instrument captured a view of the planet's rugged, cratered landscape illuminated obliquely by ... > (Jan. 21, 2008)  When the MESSENGER spacecraft passed above the surface of Mercury, it snapped the first pictures of a side of Mercury not previously seen by a spacecraft. A new image shows that previously unseen ... > (Apr. 1, 2002)  The first mission to orbit the planet Mercury took a big step toward its scheduled March 2004 launch when NASA's MESSENGER project received approval to start building its spacecraft and ... > (Jan. 15, 2008)  At 2:04 p.m. EST on Jan. 14, 2008, the MESSENGER spacecraft skimmed 200 kilometers (124 miles) above the surface of Mercury in the first of three flybys of the planet. Initial indications from the ... > (Oct. 2, 2008)  NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, which is toting an $8.7 million University of Colorado at Boulder instrument to measure Mercury's wispy atmosphere and blistering surface, will make its second flyby ... > Number of stories in archives: 44,032 Find with keyword(s): Enter a keyword or phrase to search ScienceDaily's archives for related news topics, the latest news stories, reference articles, science videos, images, and books. Just In: Physical chemists have created a new, cheap test to detect mercury, an element known to harm the brain, kidneys, heart, lungs and immune system. A. ... > ... from In Other News ... Copyright Reuters 2008 . See . ... from Get the latest science news with our free email newsletters, updated daily and weekly. Or view hourly updated newsfeeds in your RSS reader: Feedback ... we want to hear from you! Tell us what you think of the new ScienceDaily -- we welcome both positive and negative comments. 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