THE SPACECRAFT sent to take a closer look at the neighbouring planet Mercury captured the first close snapshot of the planet. The historic image is the first image ever taken by a spacecraft in the orbit of the planet. The photograph was released by NASA and is already gaining popularity on the internet.
NASA’s Messenger probe is the first mission ever to research on planet mercury. The spacecraft Messenger clicked the image on march 29th 2011 at 5:20p.m ET i.e, 0920 hours in Grand Meridian Time(GMT).
Mercury is a small, rocky planet with its crust pinched with numerous craters. The photograph shows the region around the southern pole of the planet. A 85 - kilometer wide crater named Debussy is beautifully snapped in the photograph. The crater stands at the upper right part of the picture with bright mysterious rays coming out of the centre.
Another comparatively smaller crater, called Matabei which is 15 miles wide, i.e, about 24 km is known for its unusual dark rays and is a subject of curiosity for the scientists in NASA.
The messenger spacecraft clicked about 363 photographs of the planet during its 6 hours of research and observation around the planet.
Messenger paused its examination of the planet to send the images clicked to planet earth. The process of sending data back to the earth takes a lot of time. The scientists at NASA are examining the newly sent data. More data is on its way back to earth from the spacecraft.
NASA's messenger is a $ 446 million project which is aimed at gaining the in-depth knowledge about the less-explored planet. The messenger will continue observing the planet for about a year more. The spacecraft is traveling in an elliptical orbit that covers about 124 miles(200 kilometers) of mercury at the closest point and about 15000 kilometers from the farthest point.
Messenger is the acronym for the mission Mercury, Surface,Space, Environment,Geochemistry and Ranging. Messenger reached on the planet on March 17th. In almost six and a half years of its departure from earth.
However, the primary mission of NASA hasn’t started yet. The messenger’s mission is scheduled to begin on April 4. In this mission, messenger will start mapping the entire surface of the planet mercury . it is assumed that in this process the messenger will obtain about 75,000 photographs which will facilitate the scientists in their in-depth study of the planet. Scientists say that the spacecraft’s observations will help them analyse the geology, formation and history of the planet.
Mercury is the smallest planet of our solar system and also the least studied planet. The messenger probe has circled around the planet thrice and is about to enter the orbit of the planet. NASA’s Messenger probe isn’t the first ever mission to the planet mercury. Before this, NASA’s Mariner 10 flew by the planet thrice in mid 1970s.
The photograph has gained popularity just after some hours of its release. In just a day, it has received 3000 likes and 269 tweets on a popular website. More photographs will be received from the spacecraft and will be released in the coming days.
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