NASA unveils images of Mercury overflight
NASA unveiled images and data taken by the MESSENGER probe on its flight over unchartered terrain of Mercury, the solar system's smallest and closest planet to the sun.
"This flyby allowed us to see a part of the planet never before viewed by spacecraft, and our little craft has returned a gold mine of exciting data," Sean Solomon, MESSENGER's chief investigator from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, told a press conference on Wednesday.
"From the perspectives of spacecraft performance and maneuver accuracy, this encounter was near-perfect, and we are delighted that all of the science data are now on the ground," he added.
The expert said Mercury "was not the planet we were expecting," adding that investigators found it to be "a very dynamic planet," with active volcanoes and magnetosphere.
The Mercury Surface, Space environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging spacecraft flew by Mercury on 14th January, at an altitude of 200 kilometers, sending back more than 1,200 up-close pictures and other scientific observations of unchartered terrain.
The historic fly-by was the first since the Mariner
About 55 per cent Mercury's surface, half of which is always facing the sun, is unknown.
MESSENGER'S instruments provided a topographic profile of craters and other geological features on Mercury's dark side unique in the solar system, NASA said.
The planet has huge cliffs stretching hundreds of kilometers across its face, indicating a pattern of fault activity from the planet's early history
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