MESSENGER Views an Intriguing Crater
Release Date: January 20, 2008
Keywords: Mercury Flyby 1, NAC
MESSENGER's Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) on the Mercury Dual Imaging System
(MDIS) acquired this view of Mercury's surface illuminated obliquely from the
right by the Sun. The unnamed crater (52 kilometers, or 31 miles, in diameter)
in the center of the image displays a telephone-shaped collapse feature on its
floor. Such a collapse feature, not seen on the floors of other craters in this
image, could reflect past volcanic activity at and just below the surface of
this particular crater. 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.
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 (1974-1975).
This scene was imaged while MESSENGER was departing from Mercury from a
distance of about 19,300 kilometers (12,000 miles), about 1 hour after the
spacecraft's closest encounter with Mercury. The image is of a region
approximately 236 kilometers (147 miles) across, and craters as small as 1.6
kilometers (1 mile) can be seen.
Mission Elapsed Time (MET) of image: 108828208
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie
Institution of Washington
For information regarding the use of MESSENGER images, see the image use policy.
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