Mercury From First to Last

On March 18, 2011, NASA's MESSENGER made history by becoming the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury. Eleven days later, the spacecraft captured the first image ever obtained from Mercury orbit, shown here on the left. On April 30, 2015, MESSENGER again made history, becoming the first spacecraft to impact the planet. In total, MESSENGER acquired and returned to Earth more than 277,000 images from orbit about Mercury. The last of those images is shown here on the right.