01.17.08
Shortly following MESSENGER closest approach to Mercury on January 14, 2008, the spacecraft's Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) on the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) instrument acquired the image shown below as part of a mosaic that covers much of the sunlit portion of the hemisphere not viewed by Mariner 10. Images such as this one can be read in terms of a sequence of geological events and provide insight into the relative timing of processes that have acted on Mercury's surface in the past.
The double-ringed crater pictured in the upper right of this image appears to be filled with smooth plains material, perhaps volcanic in nature. This crater was subsequently disrupted by the formation of a prominent scarp (cliff), the surface expression of a major crustal fault system, that runs alongside part of its southern rim and may have led to the uplift seen across a portion of the crater's floor. A smaller crater in the upper left of the image has also been cut by the scarp, showing that the fault beneath the scarp was active after both of these craters had formed.
The MESSENGER team is working to combine inferences about the timing of events gained from this image with similar information from the hundreds of other images acquired by MESSENGER to extend and refine the geological history of Mercury previously defined on the basis only of Mariner 10 images.
This MESSENGER image was taken from a distance of about 11,000 miles from the surface of Mercury, at 20:03 UTC, about 58 minutes after the closest approach point of the flyby. The region shown is about 300 miles across, and craters as small as 0.6 mile can be seen in this image.
Additional information and features from MESSENGER's first flyby of Mercury will be available online at http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/mer_flyby1.html. Keep checking back for the latest released images and science results!
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