MESSENGER Stories
The excerpts below are taken from Discovery Program oral history interviews conducted in 2009 by Dr. Susan Niebur and tell the story of the hurdles the MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) mission team faced with the technical…
Enigmatic depressions on the surface have puzzled scientists since the 1970s For decades, scientists have been puzzling over strange hollows on Mercury’s surface, thousands of peculiar depressions at a variety of longitudes and latitudes, ranging in size from 60 feet…
Earth’s Moon and Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, may contain significantly more water ice than previously thought, according to a new analysis of data from NASA’s LRO and MESSENGER spacecraft. The potential ice deposits are found in craters…
Like the waistband of a couch potato in midlife, the orbits of planets in our solar system are expanding. It happens because the Sun’s gravitational grip gradually weakens as our star ages and loses mass. Now, a team of NASA…
Mercury, our smallest planetary neighbor, has very little to call an atmosphere, but it does have a strange weather pattern: morning micro-meteor showers. Recent modeling along with previously published results from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft — short for Mercury Surface, Space…
A newly discovered “great valley” in the southern hemisphere of Mercury provides more evidence that the small planet closest to the sun is shrinking. Scientists used stereo images from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft to create a high-resolution topo map that revealed…
The planet Mercury is being pelted regularly by bits of dust from an ancient comet, a new study has concluded. This has a discernible effect in the planet’s tenuous atmosphere and may lead to a new paradigm on how these…
As NASA’s MESSENGER mission draws to a close, an on-board science instrument that mapped the surface of Mercury is helping the navigation team with the spacecraft’s low-altitude passes. MESSENGER remains in an eccentric orbit but is passing much closer to…
As the MESSENGER spacecraft begins its science operations above the surface of Mercury, Goddard instruments are gearing up to help unveil the planet’s mysteries. Goddard leads or co-leads two of the spacecraft’s instruments and a science investigation aboard the spacecraft.…