Urgent: Nasa Messenger

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Messenger’s approach to Mercury is chronicled in this image taken by the Wide Angle Camera on Messenger.

The unnamed crater in the center of the image displays a telephone-shaped collapse feature on its floor.

It will make the first up-close measurements since Mariner 10 spacecraft’s third and final flyby on March 16, 1975.

Only one NASA spacecraft has visited Mercury and that was Mariner 10 in 1974 and 1975.

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MESSENGER will determine why Mercury is so much denser and more metal-rich than Venus, Earth, and Mars.

MESSENGER’s Narrow Angle Camera on the Mercury Dual Imaging System acquired this view of Mercury’s surface illuminated obliquely from the right by the Sun.

On Monday, Jan. 14, a pioneering NASA spacecraft will be the first to visit Mercury in almost 33 years when it soars over the planet to explore and snap close-up images of never-before-seen terrain.

The first NASA spacecraft to image and map the dynamic interactions taking place where the hot solar wind slams into the cold expanse of space is ready for launch Oct. 19.

The MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging spacecraft, called MESSENGER, is the first mission sent to orbit the planet closest to our sun.

MESSENGER team members are examining closely the more than 1200 images returned from this flyby for other surface features that can provide clues to the geological history of the innermost planet.

Before that orbit begins in 2011, the probe will make three flights past the small planet, skimming as close as 124 miles above Mercury’s cratered, rocky surface.

It was programmed to fly by the planet three times to take images of its heavily-cratered surface.

MESSENGER’s science payload was selected to answer six key questions about the Solar System’s second densest planet.

The crater is located in the southern hemisphere of Mercury, on the side that was not viewed by Mariner 10 during any of its three flybys.

Sunshades and heat-protective blanketing were used on the Mariner 10 spacecraft, but MESSENGER’s protective layer is thicker for the intense heat exposure during orbit.

This encounter will provide a critical gravity assist needed to keep the spacecraft on track for its March 2011 orbit insertion, beginning an unprecedented yearlong study of Mercury.

Staring across interstellar space, the alluring Cat’s Eye Nebula lies 3,000 light-years from Earth.

One site of great interest is the Caloris basin, an impact crater about 800 miles in diameter, which is one of the largest impact basins in the solar system.

NASA’s Cassini team will come to bat twice this month Oct. 9 and Oct. 31 when the spacecraft flies by Saturn’s geyser moon, Enceladus.

“This is raw scientific exploration and the suspense is building by the day,” said Alan Stern, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

MESSENGER’s instruments will provide the first spacecraft measurements of the mineralogical and chemical composition of Mercury’s surface.

Radar pictures from Earth show material in the craters that resembles ice, but its identity is one of Mercury’s mysteries that NASA hopes to solve.

MESSENGER’s cameras and other sophisticated, high-technology instruments will collect more than 1,200 images and make other observations during this approach, encounter and departure.

It has been suggested that a tiny flow of ice from comets and meteorites could be cold-trapped in these polar deposits over billions of years, or that the polar deposits consist of sulfur that has seeped from minerals in the surface rocks over the eons.

Its main bipropellant engine will be used for large trajectory-correction maneuvers on the way to Mercury and to inject the spacecraft into orbit around the planet.

No doubt, the findings will amaze and excite the NASA science team during the one Earth year that it will take to open the planet’s doors for investigation.

The long-wavelength components of the gravity field provide key information about the planet’s internal structure, particularly the size of Mercury’s core.

But MESSENGER will stay cool , sheltered behind a sunshade made of heat-resistant ceramic cloth.