Nasa scientists pored on Wednesday over stunning new images of Mercury as their Messenger probe began a year-long mission to map the surface of the solar system’s least-understood planet.
After a 7.9-billion-kilometre journey that took six-and-a-half years, the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging spacecraft finally entered the planet’s orbit on March 17.
Messenger could unlock the secrets of a planet where temperatures reach a mind-boggling 427º Celsius during the day but plummet to minus -100º Celsius at night.
Despite its relative proximity to the earth, Mercury has been little explored because it is the closest planet to the sun and therefore subject to enormous gravitational pulls and massively high levels of radiation.
The first image, released on Tuesday, showed a dark crater called Debussy, while the lower part revealed a portion of Mercury near its south pole that has never before been photographed by a spacecraft.
Messenger, the first spacecraft ever placed in Mercury’s orbit, captured 363 more images over six hours, 224 of which had been transmitted back to eager Nasa scientists by Wednesday afternoon.
“Mercury has many mysteries, and now we will be able to get the close-up information that will unlock these secrets,” said James Head, a geological sciences professor who is part of the Messenger team.
“In the coming year, we will be making discoveries every day, answering old questions and revealing new mysteries that we can’t even suspect today. On earth, we don’t understand how plate tectonics started several billion years ago. Mercury may hold the answer,” James Head said.